GASPING FOR AIR

By spockslovechild

…...

Chapter Five – BUSTED

Natasha closed up the wound and snipped off the tail end of the thread. Leaning back from the demi-god, she replaced the scissors on the tray and removed the blue medical gloves, giving a toss of the soiled items into the tiny metal trash can. She grabbed for a small jar of cream and twisted the lid off. The yellowish lid clattered to the metal tray, stopping next to the first-aid kit still lying open and exposed. Natasha rubbed some of the cream onto her fingers then applied it to Loki's forehead.

He smirked at the care she was giving him. No one would have expected it; not even him. Not after the destruction he caused. No doubt they'd be part of the clean up for months to come. Meanwhile, he and Thor would be returning home to Asgard. He'd face trail, likely get imprisoned for centuries – or worse, death – and that would be that, as the mortals here say so often.

As Natasha pulled her hand back, she caught the Trickster's smirk and gave one of her own, though it more closely resembled a frown than an actual smirk. "What in God's name is so funny?"

"Of all people, Agent Romanoff, you are the last person I expected to be touching me," Loki said with a sneer. He was taking pleasure in this all too well.

"Don't get too comfortable with it." Oh, the things she could do with those scissors.

"Speaking of getting comfortable…" Loki's voice dragged off as he struggled at his restraints, making it seem they were barring down too tightly on his wrists. "You, by any chance, couldn't loosen up these restraints? They are rather cumbersome."

Natasha scoffed at the idea. "You hit your head pretty hard, I think."

She slid the chair back and stood, then recapped the jar and left it on the metal try as she bee lined for the bathroom. She flipped on the hot water tab and ran her hands under the silver faucet. She kept her hands there for several seconds afterward, and even contemplated storming from the Recovery Room. Heaving a sigh, Natasha turned the faucet off then grabbed for a paper towel. She dried her hands quickly then tossed the filthy towel into the tin trash can.

As Natasha turned to exit the bathroom, she stopped short. Something had caught her eye. It wasn't Loki or rather the absence of the trickster. She held back a gasp.

The bed was empty.

She sprang from the door's archway towards the empty bed, and the restraints that now lay open and bare. Completely void of the wrists and ankles they held there before. Her stomach dropped. How was she supposed to explain this? Thinking fast on her feet, Natasha fled to the intercom link on the wall only to suddenly be hurled back until her spine and the adjoining wall met.

She hissed through her teeth. And something immediately wrapped over her throat. She blinked her eyes closed only once. When she opened them, Loki was staring back at her. His green eyes burrowing into hers. How easily these mortals could be fooled.

Natasha seemed astonished; the bruises on his chest and stomach were gone. The gash on his forehead vanished as if it had never been. By all accounts, he appeared perfectly healthy. And then she was mentally scolding herself for falling for one of his tricks. It was an illusion! All of it! Just an illusion to fool her; to fool EVERYONE!

Her hand came up to wrap over his wrist. She gave it a twist, hoping the friction would be enough for him to release her throat. But his grip only tightened. His hand was choking her. And Loki was enjoying it. "You pathetic mortals are all too easy," he said wryly.

"Loki…" She managed, through a horsed, pained gasp.

"What?"

Gritting her teeth together, Natasha brought up a knee between his legs. Loki reeled back, dropping his hand immediately from her throat giving her enough lee way to bolt for the door.

But he was not incapacitated for long.

The trickster recovered quickly and sprang after her, catching her by the shoulders just as her hand reached for the door handle and a scream erupted from her throat. He pinned her for a second time against the wall and covered a hand over her mouth.

He watched her chest rise rapidly. Her heat thudded hard against her ribcage. The close proximity he had to her brought back nostalgic memories of the night before. That wasn't an illusion; that was real. Just as real as he was now. He had appeared to her then. Not just some twisted trick her mind was playing with her. And he was now, still playing tricks with her. She began to wonder how long it had all been an illusion.

How long he had been out of those restraints. It couldn't have been when she had gone to the bathroom to wash up. It had to have been before, and he was tricking her eyes to see something different. Had he done the same to Thor? In fact, how long had he been keeping this illusion of his up? Was he really all that injured as his body showed that day in Stark Tower? Or was it all some deluded scheme from the beginning to gain some last bit of sympathy from them?

Natasha bit down on his palm until she drew blood. Loki drew his hand back then brought it down against her face, swearing to her underneath his breath. Her head flung sideways. Loki grabbed her jaw and turned her face in order to force her to look into his eyes. She'd see the narrowing of his brows. The twisted crease in his lips. Oh, she had done it this time.

He leaned in close, and whispered something entirely inaudible in her ear. Whatever was said was enough to make the hairs on the back of her neck rise. She opened her mouth to speak, and was immediately cut off when Loki's mouth came down to crush against her lips. Her eyes widened in surprise. At first, Natasha didn't fight him. She stood there paralyzed by his lips. She didn't think. She didn't have that capacity. Her mind was a total blank. It would be easy now for Loki to fill the void with more of his lies.

When she finally did manage to get her good sense back, Natasha groaned against his mouth and pushed her hands into an area somewhere between his solar plexus and his liver. This action forced the trickster back, and enough of a distraction for Natasha to regain movement of her limbs. She made every attempt for the door again until his hand was taking possessive control of her jaw and slamming the back of her head into the wall.

She slumped to the floor in a daze, and Loki stood towering over her. Her head tilted but her vision blurred so much that it was hard to differentiate between what was reality and what wasn't. She tried to push herself up against the wall to stand but a hand on her shoulder forced her down to her backside. Natasha groaned. As the God of Mischief crouched on his haunches in front of her, and put himself eye-level with the assassin, he grinned.

Then he reached out for her knife, and she knew it was over.

…...

"You're an asshole," Natasha bluntly stated while still coming from her daze, as her vision continued to swirl around her though slowly tightened the blurred imagines in front of her eyes.

Loki gave a teasing smirk. "I know."

"Are you going to kill me?"

"I haven't decided." His eyes cast downward, fixed on the knife he twirled against his knee. Then he thought about something that made the corners of his lips curl. "He fancies you."

"Who?"

Loki's face deadpanned. "Barton." He studied her face, and had trouble reading her. "Surely even you could see that. Even when I was in his mind, I could see that clearly. No man would have given away such details to me about a woman he wasn't in love with."

Her head throbbed. She was in dire need of an aspirin, or a good beer. Mixing alcohol and pills was a bad combination indeed but it was better than this.

"You're grasping."

"Am I?" Setting the knife down by his left calf, Loki reached into the right pocket in his trousers and produced a small wallet-sized photo. "This was in his jacket." He put the picture on the ground and slid it across to her.

Natasha picked it up from the ground and turned it over.

The photo depicted a younger looking Natasha with her right leg draped over the arm rest of a chair and the other barely hanging onto it. In her hands was a book. On her face was a pair of black reading glasses. She wore one of Clint's oversized long-sleeved button ups, with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Her frumpy red hair spilled over her shoulders.

She flipped it over to read the date inscribed on the back. According to the date written in red pen, this photo was taken not too long after Clint's birthday. It had been little over a year since she joined The Avengers Initiative. And she hadn't even been aware this picture was taken until well after the fact. From the look on her face, Loki concluded she didn't even know the picture existed until now.

She felt a tight swell in her heart. She had been confused enough about the picture being taken, and further more by the fact Clint actually kept it.

Natasha looked over to see the trickster grinning. "What is it?"

"You didn't know he had that, did you?" Now Loki was amused.

She shook her head. "No." Natasha didn't seem angry, but rather confused and bewildered. In a sense, she found it touching. Not so much so with the thought of Loki having it.

"As I said, he fancies you…"

She studied the picture again, almost believing it to be another one of Loki's dirty tricks. It would seem much more plausible for the God of Mischief to have conjured something up like this. Knowing her relationship to Clint, it wouldn't take much for the trickster. He had done it once before and enjoyed doing it then. Playing with her heart was one of his specialties.

But Natasha had had enough. Dropping the picture to the floor, she made for a lunge at Loki, striking out at his head with a balled fist. The trickster caught her wrist mid-swing and grinned, and then tugged her in closer until he was breathing on her. Natasha struggled to get free but the more she struggled, the tighter Loki's grip on her wrist became. She threw up a hand to his chest and pushed against it.

"You mortals." The trickster had chuckled. "Always ready for some a fight."

Her brows narrowed. "We beat you didn't we?"

"That you did, madam. But, I do believe I am the one who tricked you all into believing I was more gravely injured than I really was. And like an idiot, you fell for it."

Natasha balled her right hand into a fist and pulled it back from Loki's chest. Gritting her teeth, she brought it down against him, hard, only for him to have caught her other wrist before the blow could have connected. Her fingers slowly uncurled. Her open palmed hand rested there with Loki's positioned over it. His thin chest was rising in an even state, as opposed to hers which moved twice as fast.

What surprised the female agent wasn't the fact he hadn't killed her yet – though she was next to positive he was planning on doing so – but what she could feel.

Thump thump... thump thump... thump thump

Natasha blinked. All this time and she believed Loki incapable of having a heart. Now she was feeling it beating at a steady pace under her palm.

"Wow," she said, almost sardonically. "So you do have a heart under there."

"Surprised?"

A little.

Loki drew her attention. His sea green eyes burrowed deep into hers, in a way that neither put her in a spell nor demanded she give herself to him. But there was something in him that confused him. Without thinking, he pulled her forward even more until her lips pressed hard against his.

The agent was taken aback for the third time in less than a few hours. This has never happened to her before. The worst of it being from Loki. The illusions had been one thing; she had expected it from him. But the kiss was something different. Something she hadn't expected, or wanted. Natasha had kissed many men before though something about this one stirred a different kind of feeling in her. She didn't pull back from him nor did she continue to encourage the onslaught.

It was Loki who cupped her lower jaw and moved in to alter the kiss. His lips moved against hers so gently that Natasha forgot for a second that it was the God of Mischief her lips were kissing. His heartbeat quickened, and feeling it beating harder made her feel excited. This feeling scared her.

Before further action could be taken, Natasha pulled back from his lips with a gasp. She didn't raise a hand to strike him but looked into his eyes with shock. The trickster had smiled. Nothing about their position had changed and he was beginning to see something different within her that had nothing to do with the Hawk.

"…and I believe yours is reserved for someone else."

A/N: OOOH! So, who do you think this 'someone else' is who Loki is referring to?

Sorry this took so long to get out! I wanted it to be good. Thank you again for all the WONDERFUL reviews. All these reviews help me to further along the story and try to give everyone something enjoyable to read.

I wanted to point out that while I DO enjoy the Loki and Natasha ship, I see it as a guilty pleasure on her part. Whereas I would see the Clint and Natasha paring as more nature. For those of you who may or may not know, they did have a small relationship in the comics. But most of us know she went with Steve Rogers by the end.

As always, pleasure continued to review. I will have freshly baked Loki shaped oatmeal raisin cookies for you in the next installment :)