Answers
Natasha was unsure how long her eyes had been closed, but she had no intention of opening them again anytime soon. She was far too content where she was, lying on her back and listening to the gentle whoosh of Loki's light breathing. The soft fur from the pelt of some exotic animal or another licked at her bare skin, the cool breeze manufactured in the lungs of her Frost Giant lover swept over her stomach, and the incessant, light buzz of the fluorescent tubes overhead was, for once, quiet.
The incessant, light buzz of the agent's thoughts was, for once, quiet.
Loki tilted his head, the small movement enough to pull Natasha away from the dream-like state she'd entered and thrust her back into reality. A low hum drifted past her lips while her fingers again took up absently stroking his hair, fine, silk strands slipping carefully over the elegant bend of her knuckles. She would never tell him so, but she loved his long hair.
The god's lips pressed a gentle kiss to the slight ridge of her exposed hipbone before whispering along its curve, the feather light touch of his fingertips grazing upward along her inner thigh. Natasha almost laughed, mistaking the attention for another round of Loki's sudden and uncharacteristic post-coital affection, tentative as it had been that night. It seemed to her that the kiss they shared after he broke into and (according to her) trashed her apartment unleashed an entirely new side of him that she never imagined could have existed. If it was at all possible, this new beast was even more unpredictable, dangerous, and uncontrollable as the monster she'd grown so accustomed to dealing with.
The pressure of a kiss to the crease of her thigh told her that this new beast was also hungry.
The touch sent an unexpected shock through the center of her body, pulling a surprised whimper from the back of her throat as her eyes sprang wide open. She gave Loki's head a light shove, just enough to dislodge him from his current position. "You need to stop now, really," she told him as firmly as she could manage, lifting her head enough to get an eye on him before it fell back against the comfortable layer of soft fur. She was proud of her stamina and endurance in all areas, but he was insatiable.
"And if I do not want to?" Loki purred in response, utterly ignoring her words and once again lowering his lips to her skin.
Natasha huffed and punched him in the ear, not too hard but hard enough. "Sounds like a personal problem to me," she retorted sharply.
Loki's gleaming eyes narrowed at her as he sat up and rubbed his offended ear but she simply cocked an unimpressed eyebrow at him. Evidently he realized that his dramatics would get him nowhere with her, so he abandoned the tactic and instead lowered himself onto his elbow beside her. His free hand slid over the bottom of her rib cage, settling into the curve of her waist before he pulled her closer to him. "And here I believed you had finally warmed up to me," he said, his low voice gravelly with irritation as he leaned down toward her.
Seeing exactly the angle he thought to attack her from now, Natasha lifted a hand and planted her palm firmly over his mouth. "I wasn't warm, I was hot, and now I'm not," she stated carefully, as though she were speaking to a slow child. "We have to stop. I can't—"
Her voice broke off suddenly, the words dead leaves circling in her throat.
Loki withdrew his arm from around her and gently pulled her hand from his face. "You can't stay," he finished for her.
Natasha tasted the bitterness of his words on her own tongue. She shook her head once, slowly, a couple of curls slipping over her bare shoulder.
The god lowered her hand to her stomach. His movements were measured, geometrically calculated as he let it rest and then withdrew his touch. He pushed himself into a sitting position and turned his face toward the glass, his brows furrowed slightly, his wrist poised over his drawn up knee.
The assassin rose up on her elbows. Her watercolor eyes explored the curve of his spine, the slight dip between his shoulder and bicep, the line of his set jaw and the hollow place where his neck met his chest. He was so still, so pale that he might have been chiseled from pure ivory and she wouldn't have known save for the gentle, barely perceptible rise and fall of his shoulders.
Sitting upon that strange pelt, beneath the harsh glow of the fluorescent lights, there was a poetry about Loki that ran so deeply, so frenzied she feared she may drown in it.
Natasha tore her eyes away from him and sat up, her heart stomping out an uneven rhythm in her chest. She dug her fingers into the corners of her eyes and ran a careful hand through her hair before glancing briefly about the room. A sudden desire to be clothed overtook her, but the nearest articles all belonged to Loki. That mightn't have mattered except that he refused to wear anything other than that complicated leather armor of his. Her eyes flickered back to the man beside her, still staring enigmatically out of the glass. Silently she pulled the end of the pelt over her lap and crossed her arms over her chest, hugging it to her.
"Loki," she began, her husky voice quiet, reluctant to intrude upon his silence. He neither answered nor turned to look at her. "Loki, we need to talk...about Thanos."
The god's brows knit further together and the corner of his lips twitched. He didn't turn further away from her, but his gaze lowered down to the floor as he muttered, "I thought it my responsibility to ruin your visits."
Natasha swallowed and forced herself to remain unmoved by the stinging spite in his voice. "You've been here for over three months. You need to give me something," she said carefully.
"Do I not already give you enough?" he retorted a little too quickly, a little too defensively.
Her eyes narrowed and her lips parted slightly, his words stinging her in that special place where hurt and anger were inextricably intertwined. "You won't be giving me anything if you don't talk," she answered, making no effort to blunt the biting quality of her tone.
Loki produced a noise that straddled the line between a huff and a growl as he pushed himself to his feet. He took a couple steps away from her, gaining some distance before he twitched a few fingers. "I grow weary of your threats, Agent Romanoff," he said coldly as his clothing circumvented Natasha to begin wrapping around him once more.
"It's not a threat, Loki."
Slowly the god turned to her, just enough to meet her gaze with suspicious, veiled eyes.
Natasha stared back at him for a long moment and then gave a defeated sigh, her strong posture deflating as her shoulders sank forward. "Fury told me," she said quietly. Her disobedience twisted her insides like the turn of a dull knife. "You're Earth's bargaining chip when Thanos shows up whether you cooperate with us or not. He's convinced you know something that can help us, and if I can't get it out of you, he'll...quote, 'find someone who can.'"
The final piece of Loki's armor curled around him, and stillness settled over the cell like a thick, woolen blanket. Natasha watched, mute and unmoving, as his leaden gaze dropped. An array of extraordinarily subtle emotions she couldn't identify flickered across his angular features, his bright eyes twitching around the same spot on the floor. Several long moments slipped by before he looked at her again, and when he did she needed to force herself not to recoil at the cold fury crystallizing behind his emerald orbs.
"And you tell me this now...so that I will cooperate," he stated slowly, his voice dangerously even.
"Yes," Natasha answered quietly, uncertainly, but by the time the word left her lips he was already continuing.
"Now, after all this time, after—oh, but I have underestimated you yet again, the infamous Black Widow." The venom in his words dripped across the metal floor as he stepped over to her. The assassin, curled inside the sleek black pelt, was dwarfed by the god's imposing figure as she craned her neck to look up at him.
"Loki, what are you—" she tried to ask, but again he cut across her.
"You are brilliant, fearless. I suppose your director encouraged you to use any means necessary to gain my trust, did he not?" the god went on, his serrated voice deadly. The light of recognition burst behind Natasha's eyes. "I must admit, in all my years, none have ever made so great a fool of me as you. I encourage you to revel in the thrill of your achievement while you can, because I will not allow anyone to—"
"You have got to be shitting me!" Natasha half growled, half shouted. Her forehead dropped to meet the heels of her palms and she released a tense noise of frustration through gritted teeth. She sucked in a large breath as her fingertips dug into her hairline, and when she resurfaced and snapped her gaze again onto Loki, she couldn't even take the proper amount of pleasure in his stunned, slack jawed expression.
"You stupid, arrogant, batshit, selfish little prick!" she forced out, only barely controlling her volume as she held the pelt around herself with one hand and climbed to her feet. He still looked down on her, but she acted as though she were the giant between them as she continued, "Newsflash, Loki: I am the only person on your side. You have burned every single bridge on this planet, and there is not one human in the world who wouldn't hand you over in a second if it meant getting to live another day. Ever since you showed up here, you've given me every reason in the world to just give up on you, to tell Fury you're a lost cause and to have fun trying to torture anything out of you. You said it to me yourself once. I have a comfortable home, a loving partner, and a list of throats to cut, but here I am. With you. You wanted to know why. Tell me, Loki. Why am I still here?"
Natasha's defiant, challenging stare burned straight through Loki, and she watched with a certain amount of satisfaction as his initial anger at her insults melted away. He looked back at her, and all at once he seemed to shrink in on himself. His lips released their snarl and pressed lightly together, and an emptiness gathered in his eyes that chilled the assassin more intensely than the touch of his icy hands ever could.
He had no answer for her.
She felt her own rage begin to falter. Unable to hold his gaze any longer, she threw the pelt at his chest and turned away from him. "Wonder if there are more stupid powers you didn't tell me about," she muttered to herself as she stalked to where her crumpled clothes lay strewn about. Her fingertips snatched a pair of red lace panties from the floor and sorted them out.
"If I did tell you, would you have returned?"
The god's murmured words crept over her, freezing Natasha in place as she bent to slip her underwear on. Her breath caught briefly, her stomach turned, and her heart seemed to contract in an odd way, as though a hand had reached into her chest and given it an unexpected squeeze.
Blinking the uncomfortable feelings away, she stepped into her panties and softly replied, "I guess you'll just have to trust me."
Quiet settled over the cell once more, broken only by the rustling of Natasha's clothes as she dressed. She moved slowly enough, slower than she might have otherwise, although by the time she was sliding her t-shirt over her chest she didn't fully understand why. Loki wouldn't speak, wouldn't give anything up now that he knew definitively that there was no point. It wasn't like she had a plan to appease Thanos without giving him up or any leverage to change Fury's mind. If he stayed on Earth, he would be handed over whether or not he chose to help her. In the end, he had nothing to gain and an eternity, give or take a few more less lonely nights, to lose.
Natasha shrugged into her light leather jacket and pulled on her shoes before she straightened up and crossed the cell. Dregs of disappointment clung to the edges of the empty look she wore, like thinning blood circling a damp drain.
"Tell your director," Loki murmured as Natasha's fingertips paused on the keypad beside the door, "that he searches for the Infinity Stones."