#in all seriousness though huge congrats to @startrekkingaroundasgard

[dilfbane]

Your Weeping(Your Need For His Touch)

Summary: When things go south on a mission, you have to confront more than just the sketchy town, cartoon villains, and one-bed hotel room you’re forced to share with Loki. You have to come to terms with not only the consequences of being captured, but also the God of Mischief’s feelings for you - Because for all that he might be an asshole, sometimes, he really does have a heart. Written for the Picture Is Worth A 1,000 Words 6k Follower Writing Challenge by @startrekkingaroundasgard 

Pairing: Loki/(Female)Reader

Warnings: Descriptions of injuries and medical treatment, as well as discussions of the inevitable mindset around sacrificing oneself for the mission that I feel like being part of the Avengers would entail. Also swearing, because at its core, this story started out as a bit of a crack! fic. 

Word Count: 7.8k. 

A/N: So apparently when I have mental breakdowns they result in me writing crack-fic that takes a 180 veer into angst and fluff for absolutely no reason. For the sake of the crack-fic, in this timeline Loki was forced to help the Avengers take down bad guys directly after the end of the first Avengers movie, so… Is that a confusing plot hole I didn’t know how to account for except by making this AU? Maybe. Did I do it anyway?…. Yeah. This really was meant to be a crack-fic about Loki and the reader confessing their feelings set in the bizarre world of meme culture, I didn’t realize there were going to be feels in it until it was three in the morning and all of a sudden this happened. That being said, your girl went there, so enjoy! 

“Oh, shit,” You say, as you take in the grimy hotel room. The walls all smeared in what looks like dried blood, the putrid smell of rotten eggs, a crack-screened television with a fine dusting of some suspiciously white powder. And, of course, “There’s one bed.” 

“Hmm?” Asks Loki, turning towards you, briefly, from unpacking. He had dumped his suitcase(Magically plucked out of a chaotic liminal space) unceremoniously on the bed’s scratching, pilling coverlet without so much as a second glance at the rest of the room. And why do you need a suitcase, anyways?? You wonder. It isn’t like we’re planning to be here that long. In fact, you hoped with every fiber of your being that you’d be here for as little time as possible, because this town might actually be the sketchiest place you’ve ever seen in your life; no small feat, for a bona-fide member of S.H.I.E.L.D. 

You’ve kicked alien ass on a mutated purple Mongolian death-worm three thousand feet over New York City. You’ve run reconnaissance to rescue debatably-magical items sequestered away in an ancient cave labyrinth plastered in paintings and untranslatable runes, gunfire and what could only be described as the baying of hellhounds in the near distance. You’ve fist-fought a gigantic hive-mind robot in a field of artificially sentient feral steel suits - You’ve even survived Tony’s parties. 

Yet none of those scenarios hold a candle to this fucking town. 

And Loki, the asshat, seems utterly, competently - no, maniacally - unfazed. 

“There’s one bed,” You repeat, into the air. 

“Ah,” Says Loki, straightening. 

“You don’t see that problem with that?!” 

“Should I?” He asks you, walking across the room in long, graceful strides to stand in front of you. He wears the same expression he always wears, amused and indifferent, but this time with the addition of a single, elegantly-arched eyebrow. You drop your head, refusing to meet his somewhat-curious gaze. It physically hurts, how attractive Loki is. Not for the first time, you curse whatever god decided that you and him would once again be mission partners - in this case, you belatedly realize, and choke back a thick laugh, said god is, unsurprisingly, Thor. 

If you survive this, you make a note to beat his head in with Mjolnir. As it is, you are here in this room with Loki, with perhaps twenty IPP agents and a reckless poisoner dogging your every move, and there’s a high chance that you won’t live long enough to navigate whatever the hell sleeping with your crush-who-has-murdered-men. Ok, so ‘murdered men’ isn’t entirely accurate. More like ‘caused the murder of men inadvertently through his schemes’. It doesn’t seem to make much of a difference, right now. 

And what about Loki? He is still staring you down, like you’re some wind up toy moments away from going off. Funny, that, you think. If ever there were a time to not have a mental breakdown, it would be here, with him. You’ve crossed a lot of moral lines in your life, but you will be damned if you let Loki Laufeysson see you cry. Loki is graceful. Composed. Sarcastic. Lithe. Rolls his eyes at almost every statement that comes out of somebody’s mouth. But he is, also, beautiful. Shockingly comforting, in his own nihilistic way. You don’t know what it says about you that you find comfort in statements like, Try not to die, you know that I hate funerals. Part of you - most of you - doesn’t want to. But it gives you strength, somehow, to shrug off the day and ground your flailing mind in evading Loki’s calculated manipulation. I won’t show you my weakness, you think to yourself. It’s not enough, but it’s a start. 

“No,” You tell him - too quickly, he’ll pick up on that - “You’re right, you shouldn’t. It’s fine. We have - a lot to deal with, is all.” 

Loki nods, seemingly accepting your answer, but his eyes are still narrowed, watching you like he’s calling your bluff. You talk right past that look - have to, to keep yourself sane, to not think about the one bed that looms large over this entire conversation. It doesn’t even look like a comfortable bed. 

“We have two days,” You say, to stop yourself thinking of it. And, also, to talk your way through your disarmingly disjointed thoughts. Loki nods. It would really help if you said something, you think. Swallow the thought, hot and thick, down your throat. What’s the point of a mission partner if you can’t even soundboard off them? “The Pink Cobra could strike anyone, anytime. The IPP is planning something in New York - “ 

“Isn’t everyone, these days, planning something in New York?” 

He sounds regretful, and for half a second you want to offer him the reassurance that his very presence offers you. But you are sure he doesn’t know what he does to you - with his words, with the sidelong glances that you’ve felt linger on your form far too long in the heat of a fight. If you didn’t know any better, you would say Loki worries about you. 

“We have to shut him down,” You say. Focus on the Pink Cobra, because honestly, that’s easier. “Find out where he manufactures. Not get poisoned,” You add, at the end. 

“Yes,” Loki says, tone dripping with sarcasm, “We should certainly try not to get ourselves killed. Failing that, I suppose, we can at least request that no one in H.Y.D.R.A gets autopsy access.” 

“Loki?” You ask. Rhetorically. “You’re not helping.” 

He smirks at you, then. He knows. 

“What do you propose that we do then?” He asks, taking a step towards you, getting so close that you can feel his hot breath. “About the Pink Cobra?” 

“Find him.” You say, fumbling, blush rising high on your cheeks. 

Tonight? 

One bed? 

You are screwed. 

                                                             ***

When you were a kid - think really little, Capri Sun pouches and still believing that true love wasn’t complicated - your father told you that every story needed a good supervillain. You aren’t sure if the Pink Cobra counts as a good supervillain, but he’s the least confusing one that you have to deal with - and, as far as villains go, a fine enough challenge to face. He’s like a madman out of some high fantasy novel, with dark eyes and a sable-sewn cloak and a penchant for poisoning. He is adept in all the arts of the woman’s murder; he has a keen grasp on the side-effects of arsenic and camphor and tansy and cyanide and strychnine. He’s been found to have dropped crystal phials filled with belladonna and ricin while fleeing a scene. If all else fails, he’s more than practiced with daggers. 

In other words, he’s the kind of villain that none of you, with your flying suits and telekinesis and super-strength, are anywhere near prepared to waylay. 

The plan, as far as team Avengers is concerned, is easy: 

You and Loki. This town, where the webs of his manufacturing production and the few glimpses of information that Thor has totally legally excavated out of his captured minions has led to. Two days until some undefined grand attack bears down on the city you live in. Two days to find the Pink Cobra and kill him. The more time passes with no headway, the more you think that this is an impossible task, but you know what Tony would say. We have our best minds on it. 

The thing is, you aren’t sure that that’s true. The minds that have been set to this task are you and the God of Lies. It’s hardly the best they could have come up with, considering your track records. Actually, you take that back - Loki was a good choice for this mission, because, not three hours after arriving in this hellhole of a city, he seems to have somehow developed the ability to read minds. More specifically, yours. And that could prove stunningly useful. 

The scene, as it stands: Loki, sprawled across the lumpy bed, three pairs of crisp white shirts, a plaid scarf, and a full set of Asgardian battle armor neatly hung in the mothball-infested closet, flicking through channels on the grain, cracked television with an apathetic expression and one arm thrown haphazardly over bent leg. Propped up in such a way that he could jump or spin or parry at a moment’s notice, yet perfectly, devastatingly languid, leafing through Nick Fury’s dossier on the Pink Cobra. He looks at you like a god, you think, and then remember. He is one. 

You, on the floor, because on top of all the other things this hotel doesn’t have, like two beds, there isn’t anything even resembling a desk, shifting through a glowing, holographed file archive from headquarters that barely runs on your severely outdated laptop. It’s a point of pride to you, keeping the laptop - not because it’s good, but because it’s survived five years of being an Avenger, which is something not even all the Avengers can claim to have done. You’re also fairly certain that Tony’s attempts to update the firmware had infested it with some sort of renegade virus. Elevated above your screen, the files are split into two groups, the sum total of everything that you know about both of the groups that are avidly trying to kill you. 

There’s the wealth of information containing the Pink Cobra’s poisoning sprees, but those aren’t the files that interest you, and you know that Loki’s not much interested in them either. That honor falls to the fanatics at the IPP, the Imminently Predictable Psyops organization, which you know even less about than you do about the Pink Cobra, chief among which the fact that they need a new name. Imminently Predictable Psyops?, Tony had said, when you’d finally apprehended one of their proxies. What do they think this is? Some type of ARG? 

What you’ve gleaned, from months worth of studying the network, is that they operate as a sort of cringe-oriented death cult intent on ‘reshaping the universe through meme agents’. They’d been on S.H.I.E.L.D’s radar for a long time - upwards of a year - before anyone at team base learned they existed - which, you can almost hear Loki saying, was a failure in the extreme. Currently, it was your job to obsessively worry over whether they were going to send ‘meme agents’ to bust through the door of your seedy hotel room and off you both. You hated - truly loathed - how casually Loki was taking it all. 

He’s acting like nothing was wrong with this situation, when, in fact, you’re ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure that this night will end up with one or both of you dead. It is, to say the least, disconcerting. 

Kill switch, the holograph files read. Cross-referential Neil Cicierega acoustic weaponry. Your mind sees the words, but doesn’t comprehend them, and you run a hand up to rub at your bleary eyes with annoyance. You risk a glance upwards; on the bed, Loki scans page after page after page with disinterested nonchalance, punctuating the flipping over of each document with a noncommittal hum; as if to say, I understand you. As it to say, This could be worse. You try to slip into that mindset. Certainly, things could be worse. 

Actually, though? Not really. 

Because, for all the world, the holo-file in front of you just said ‘Pepe The Frog Chaos Banking Laser Initiative’. 

“What the fuck does that even mean?!” 

“Sorry?” 

You whip your head around. Loki, raising an eyebrow. Damn that - perfect - eyebrow. 

“Sorry,” You echo back at him, rubbing your eyes again, perversely glad for the break, even if it is this awkward. “I … said that out loud, didn’t I?” 

“Marginally,” He tells you. “Yes.” 

“Sorry,” You - well, it’s not a whine, not exactly. You’re tired, and there’s no way you’re going to sleep tonight, so you feel like your tone’s justified. “I didn’t mean to do that. I think I’m just - this is. Completely nonsensical.” 

“Show me?” He asks, and you snort. He could totally just look up, but - 

“Do you have a P.h.d in memes?” You ask him, and, before he can answer, “Because unless you have a P.h.d in memes, I don’t think you’ll be able to help.” 

“You’d be surprised,” Loki says. Vaults over the bed with the speed and grace of a panther, filling the air with a cringing wheeze as the rusty springs bend underneath him, and landing in front of the holo-file, pushing you aside slightly to get a better view. When his fingers brush against your side, cool and firm, you flinch. 

“Tired,” You offer, when he shoots you a momentarily concerned look. “Just. Need to sleep, later, I think.” 

But Loki is already scanning the file, and when he looks up, not five seconds later, you want to hit somebody. Preferably, you think, him. 

“I would assume,” Loki says, “That they’re using time travel in order to obtain and store monetary value by way of a Pepe-the-frog inspired laser array.” 

“Oh,” You say. You blink once. Blink twice. Still have no idea what that means. “Right.” 

“Do you not know your memes, love?” He asks you, smirking. And oh, if you don’t feel things. 

“I don’t go on the internet, much,” You tell him. “Too busy, you know, trying not to get killed.”

 Loki shrugs. Sidles away from the file. The groan and squeak of those springs tells you he’s back on the bed, giving you some well-needed space, but you can’t bring yourself to look. 

“You can sleep,” He says, “If you want.” 

“Ha!” You yelp/choke/embarrassingly bleat out into the room’s stale silence. Underneath the rotten eggs, you catch a whiff of bong-water. “No.” 

“There’s a bed,” Loki says, cocking his head pointedly and patting the lumpy covers. 

“Yeah, that’s - kind of the problem.” 

“Why?” He asks you. 

“You - really?” 

“I was only asking,” Says Loki, re-focusing his attention on whichever Pink Cobra document’s next in the folder. “If you aren’t comfortable telling me - I merely thought, seeing as you were tired, you might take this opportunity to rest.” 

“Yeah,” You  tell him, “Of course, that’s - nice of you.” 

It comes out stilted. Patently off. If he notices, he doesn’t say. 

“Are you going to - um. Do you need help, with the rest? The ones I have seem kind of hopeless. I mean,” You say, when he doesn’t look up, “I don’t think that we have to worry about getting demolished by trans-dimensional Agarthian wormholes.” 

“Of course not,”” Loki says, scoffing and incredulous, gaze, you are sure, on his page. “If they wanted to kill us, they’d send someone with a gun.” 

In reality, it’s several someones. 

                                                             ***

“You jinxed it,” Is the first thing you tell him, when the men leave you. They’ve thrown you into a one-room warehouse, rickety shelves stacked with cartoonish tubs of green goop and mildewing boxes filled with grenades and machine guns and what appears, at second-glance, to be twelve-fingered latex gloves. You’re tied wrist to wrist, ankle to ankle, and your throat feels uncharacteristically parched. Fear, you tell yourself. Apprehension. “Can’t you just - use your seidr to magic us out of this?” 

If you could see him - which you can’t, because you’ve been tied back to back - you’d swear that Loki was glaring. 

“Do you - do you have a plan?” You ask, after a moment. 

“I’m working on it,” He says. 

“That’s all?” You say. “We were dragged out of our drug-dealer’s hotel room by a bunch of robed men with guns and the only thing you have to say is ‘I’m working on it?’” 

“I’d get it done faster,” Says Loki, “If you wouldn’t interrupt me.” 

“Ok,” You tell him, “No interrupting you. Got it. That’s - Alright.” 

Unfortunately, not interrupting him is easier said than done, because without the sound of your voice, you are left to your thoughts. 

The men had broken in nearly immediately after Loki’s glib, sardonic retort to your worries, shooting the glass out of the room’s already half-smashed-in window and kicking the door in simultaneously. A bit much, isn’t it?, Loki’d asked, and you had wanted to smack yourself on the forehead. Really not the time, you had hissed, but Loki hadn’t seemed to hear you. Do you do this with everyone they send you to assassinate?, he had asked, instead. The men had been dressed in long, billowing cloaks of bright red, embroidered with orange snakes framing a picture of Beaker from the muppets with early 2000’s emo hair. Chaotic meme agents, you had thought to yourself. So that’s what they’re supposed to look like. 

You hadn’t picked up, until now, on the snakes. 

“They’re working together,” You say, when you can’t stand the playback of Loki being disarmed after spinning and tossing his silver daggers at the men, of the men kneeing him in the balls and twisting your arms behind your back, holding a gun to your head to stop you from trying to fight. Waking up in the back of a van that smelled like microwaved fish. Being tossed like garbage onto the floor of the warehouse, painted in bruises and cuts from the small pieces of glass that had dug their way into your skin. “The IPP and the Pink Cobra.” 

“Obviously,” Loki says. Sharply. 

“Did Tony not -“ 

“Stark,” Loki practically growls, and, ok, you’re not losing it but that did make you jump in your skin, “Is an idiot. He wouldn’t know how to connect the dots if they were presented to him in a Buzzfeed Unsolved episode.” 

“That’s - You had that on Asgard?” You ask him, momentarily distracted. You wish that you could see Loki’s face, and are very glad that you can’t. 

“That isn’t the point,” Loki says. 

“I know,” You tell him. You’re scared that your voice is trembling. Scared that he can tell, even though he’s not facing you, how badly your fingers are shaking. Scared that he knows your worst, biggest secret - 

That, despite being an Avenger, you are anxious. That, despite him being Loki, despite him being here, and wonderfully, infuriatingly himself, he cannot help you, this time. 

You are going to die, covered in cuts and abrasions, on the floor of a meme network’s headquarters, at three a.m in the morning. They are going to come in with umbrellas that shoot poison darts or the ex-presidents Point Break masks and mow you down, and Loki has no fucking plan. You feel the ropes tighten where they’re knotted, itchy and fierce, and you have to fight to keep yourself from whining in terror and nerves. Whining isn’t what Loki needs right now. Whining’s not going to save you. 

What is going to save you, you try and remind yourself, is Loki. If you can shut up. If you can let him decipher what needs to be done. If he can figure out some way to do it before the blowtorch-wielding robed vigilantes or some disincarnate meme god comes back and draws their electronically-sharpened fingernails across your throat hard enough to split skin and sinew, send waves of blood down the front of your shirt like a river of sweet, thick red honey and toss your corpse in a ditch by a highway and - 

“Y/N?” It is foggy, barely-heard. Posh. “Y/N!” Louder, this time. There are fingers on your wrist, bent backwards to grip you. Squeezing, insistent and there. “Breathe.” 

Fuck, you think. You’d started to hyperventilate. To shake, with a full-body tremor that forecasts a great, unstoppable wave of sobbing panic. And Loki had noticed. “I need you to trust me,” He says. “Trust me to get us out of this. Can you do that for me, darling?” 

He has never called you darling before, but God how you’ve wanted him to. You feel like you’re being stabbed in the heart - because there is no way he means it, no way that this is anything other than a desperate and cruel attempt to get you to calm down. Something that belies how obvious you are. How needy you are. How pathetic. And yet - 

And yet, he doesn’t say it meanly. He speaks like he cares about you, and in the face of your impending death, you want to think Loki cares. You’d let him say anything, do anything to you, right now. More than that, though, more than any of that - as you think back to meeting him, to your blossoming late-night friendship and twitchy banter and the quiet moments you’ve shared with him in-between battles - 

“I trust you, Loki,” You tell him, and feel your breath quiet in you. Feel yourself growing still and calm with the certainty that Loki will do as he’s said. 

That you will survive this. 

That -

“Good,” Loki says. Not relieved, but determined. Leaving you no room to argue. 

“So what do we do?” You ask him. 

“Nothing,” Says Loki, and you can hear his wide grin. 

“Nothing?” You ask him, gawking.

 “Nothing,” Says Loki. He gives your hand a tight squeeze. 

And then the Pink Cobra walks in. 

                                                             ***

This will end badly, you think. It’s about the only thing that you can think, preoccupied as you are with - 

It might be easier not to - 

Fuck. 

The thing is - and you really do try not to move, not to groan, not to scream - the thing is, you thought that when Loki said he had a plan, that said plan wouldn’t involve you being collateral damage for a LARP-er who’d most likely broken out of an asylum. I wish that we could be back in that shitty one-bed hotel room, you think to yourself, and - alright, not the best timing, but it rips a laugh out of you, spiraling and unhinged, before you feel the Pink Cobra, resplendent in coral cloak and villainous swagger, slug you one in the jaw. It hurts worse than you’d thought it would - you’ve never really gotten injured on missions, you’re usually good at talking yourself out of things, which is why the Avengers keep you around. You can speak any language, as long as you’ve heard it once, and your customary daily awkwardness can shift into persuasion like flicking a light-switch on. 

Usually, though, you had an opportunity to speak, and weren’t rendered speechless by - 

Loki, if you’re being honest. How much you want to kiss him. How much of an asshole he is. Trust me, he’d asked you. Can you do that for me? The Pink Cobra’s grip is sharp and bruising on your side; he’s slipped his fingers up your shirt and is pressing the point on your side that threatens to make your knees buckle, making bile rise up in your throat, driving you wild with the aching need to flee. He has one hand clasped over your mouth, now that you’ve quieted, and you can feel something - pain, and a pill - pressed snugly into his palm. He will force it down you, you know, if Loki so much as sighs wrong. 

You’ll never trust him again. 

You wish that you knew what the time was. If you end up dying at 4:20, you’re going to throw fists with somebody in hell. 

You wish, also, for aspirin. Avengers training has left you woefully unprepared for the reality of getting punched in the face. You can already feel your jaw starting to swell, taste an egregious amount of blood. You’re pretty sure that the force of the blow knocked a tooth out. 

What strikes fear into you, though - a fear somehow deeper than the absolutely bone-chilling, blood-curdling knowledge of what the Pink Cobra might do to you - is the look you’d seen on Loki’s face in the seconds after he’d grabbed you, before it fell into practiced, amused apathy. He’d gone white, and his eyes had blown wide. His fingers had spasmed with anger. 

He’d looked as scared as you feel. 

And you have no idea why. 

It isn’t like you’re anyone special. Not any more than the rest of the team. Less so than most of them. You aren’t a god, like Loki and Thor are. You don’t have stealth-assassin training, like Bucky, or super-strength like Steve. You can’t seamlessly pilot mechanical suits over the New York skyline like Tony, or use a crossbow like Clint, or beat thirty people in single-hand combat like Nat, or change into a nitro-fueled rage machine like Bruce. 

You can’t do anything, much. 

Except, apparently, die.

You squeeze your eyes shut, not letting yourself look at him. You won’t let Loki’s disinterested face be the last thing that you see. It makes the Pink Cobra’s words all the worse, when he speaks. His voice is dark and sick and timbered, and you feel maggots crawling over your skin as he slots you closer to his body, tightening his already painful grip on you so that you can’t move even an inch away from his tensed, coiled muscles. 

“So,” He says, “You are superheroes? How long did it take me, to apprehend you? Ah - three and a half hours? Tell your boss-man, do better next time.” 

“I’ll pass it along,” Loki says. His voice sounds different. You can’t place why. Still won’t look. 

“You won’t,” The Pink Cobra says. You can feel his shoulders rise, then fall. Feel him smirk. You love Loki’s smirk - secretly delight in drawing it from him, sometimes - but the Pink Cobra’s only fills you with yet more terror. You’ve pursed your lips tightly shut against the intrusion of his hand, but when Loki speaks he forces your bruised, bleeding jaw open and shoves the pill into your mouth. The pain of your injury tears through you like white lightning and you thrash, trying to escape. A keening sound claws its way out of you, fevered and anguished, and you feel your hands, still bound up in ropes, trying in vain to push off and away. The man behind you sighs, and then aims a swift kick at the back of your knees, which sends you down before you can so much as yelp. Your knees hit the floor, and he’s holding you by your hair now, twisting it so hard that you’re almost sure he’ll scalp you. He’s pulled something - too big to be be a knife, some kind of shortsword?! - Out from beneath his cloak, and is pressing it up against the column of your throat. You feel the weight of the capsule between your teeth heavily now, and realize what it means in the split-second before the Pink Cobra bends and whispers, Your choice; stale and rancid into the shell of your ear. 

Next, he addresses Loki. 

“You’ll be wanting to know what our plan is,” He says. Our, you think. We were right. “Hmm? I know how you people are. Always wanting to know. Tell me this, Mischief Man. What will I get, if I tell you? What price are you willing to pay?” 

You know what this is. You know it like the ache in your heart when Loki brushes you off. Like the safety you feel in his arms. You open your eyes. Take in Loki’s face - he’s trying to hide, but you know, you know how he feels. You know what he’s going to choose. 

And you know that you can’t let him choose it. 

“You’ll let her go,” Loki asks, “If we let you leave here?” 

“The thing could be managed.” 

No, you think. No, Loki, don’t! Whatever the Pink Cobra’s going to do, whatever the IPP’s planning, knowing’s worth more than your life. 

“One thing I want to know,” Loki says. He’s twirling a knife of his own, a slim silver number he keeps on him at all times, and you feel the blade on your own throat start to dig in - not enough to draw blood, but enough for you to feel it. The threat of it. The promise of it, and the coldness of the gleaming metal. “You and the IPP? How does it fit?” 

“You want information from me?” The Pink Cobra asks. Lets his blade bite you, just barely, and the strength it takes for you not to scream is more strength then you’d known you possess. 

“Yes,” Says Loki. “It’s not like I’m asking for much.”

He meets your gaze. You meet his. You hope that he cannot read it. His eyes are so worried, so desperate, you nearly break down. 

“I suppose,” The Pink Cobra says, “That you’ve earned it. Getting here - getting this far - it must have been no easy task. Fine. There is no Imminently Predictable Psyops organization. They were a - what do you call it? Red herring? A scent of blood for the shark.” 

“You fabricated them,” Loki says. “Why would you fabricate them?” 

He is losing his composure, you can tell. You will never be ready for this. He will never be ready for this. You hope that he will forgive you, and you know that he never will, and you swallow the pill in your mouth. 

“Because it was fun,” The Pink Cobra says. 

And then your body knows pain. 

                                                             ***

“He didn’t think I would do it,” You say. Your mouth feels thick, clotted with blood and shock, and your body is one raw, gaping wound, but the giddy feeling of victory has begun to course through your veins. Pure, unfiltered adrenaline. You had waited for the moment of death to come, and it hadn’t. The pill is fake, your mind had screamed. But there’d been one thing left, that might work. You had breathed as slowly as you possibly could, forced every muscle of your scared, writhing body into single-minded limpness, rolled your eyes backwards into your head,  drew one last breath in, and fallen. Twitched, for a few seconds, like a rag-doll. Then made yourself still. 

Loki had slit the Pink Cobra ear to ear, beaten him within an inch of his life as he bled out, screaming like a man deranged. He’d left him a wet, bloody mess on the floor, and the blood had run down the not-quite-steady plane of it, pooling around you and mixing with the blood from your jaw, from the evening’s earlier glass cuts, from the deep, burning stab wound the Cobra had got on your arm. 

You breathe, and your body knows pain. 

You look at Loki, and your body knows pain. 

He is shaking. Visibly shaking. His hands are clenched into fists at his side, and he looks as pale as bleached bones. His eyes are shot red - he had sobbed, when you fell, and a howl had torn through his body. You don’t know what to do, what it means, what the hell even to say to him. His cheeks are tear-stained, his breaths ragged. 

You blink, and your body feels pain. 

“We won,” You croak out. “Loki, we won.” It hurts worse than anything you’ve ever felt in your life. “I think he broke one of my ribs.” 

You don’t mean to say that last part, but you do, and you are the one crying now, because it feels like he probably has, and you can barely even stay awake through this pain. It feels like the Hulk is pulling you limb from limb. Like all of those nightmares you’ve had where Loki decided to leave you - to go back to Asgard, and never speak to you again. 

Stupid, you think. He won’t, again. Not after this. 

Loki still hasn’t spoken. He’s looking at you, and his eyes are wild. Desperately, jaggedly roaming your body. His fists twitch with every new part of your body they land on. 

“That bad, huh - Oh, fuck.” 

And just like that, the tension leaves Loki’s body. The dam that had held him firmly in place is broken, and he’s running towards you with none of his usual grace. Dropping down by your side. He hoists you, and you hiss, and the tears won’t stop coming, so you bury your face in his shirt, nose pressed at the crisply ironed collar. Don’t care that it’s bleeding, because Loki’s here now. Holding you. Keeping you real. He’s got one hand stroking your hair and his touch feels right, nothing like the Pink Cobra’s, and he’s whispering: You brave, precious, idiot, how dare you, how dare you throw your life away like that?! 

“It worked,” You exhale - it’s the most you can manage. You would laugh, if it wouldn’t shred you to pieces. Loki cradles you fiercely, hands grasping at the sweat-and-blood soaked fabric of your shirt, running over you as if he doesn’t believe you’re alive. “It - hurts,” You get out. Barely. “Loki, it - I can’t -“ 

“Don’t,” He tells you. His voice has gone brittle, choked with thorns. “Don’t talk. Don’t - Don’t ever do that again. Do you hear me? You will never do that again.” 

If I need to, I will, you think. And you wonder if that’s why you’re here. Wonder if that’s why you’re strong. You wonder, and hurt, and believe. Feel the strength of him, clutching you like you’re the only thing in the world, taking in greedy lungfuls of your weeping, your need for his touch. 

You can’t talk, anymore. It hurts too badly. But you surge, upwards, up into where he’s holding the back of your head, pressing your forehead into the dark, warm space under his jaw that smells like smoke and peppermint. Loki is taller than you are - you fit right into the curve of his neck, and his long curls curtain you in a bubble of warmth and content. 

“Promise,” You say, but it comes out unintelligible, and Loki’s hands are running, so gently, over your skin. 

“What was your plan?” You ask him, forcing it out of your body. 

“Hush,” Loki says, “Later.” 

There might not be any later, you think. Not like this. 

                                                             ***

In the hotel room, an ocean of scattered pages and ceiling mold and blessed privacy, you balance, cross-legged, on the bed. The wind blows wet and cold from an earlier rain through the busted out window. You have managed this out of sheer stubborn-ness, because it is the most that Loki allowed you to do. You’d passed out, twice, on the journey back - he had magicked you there, though it had taken a considerable amount of effort that you weren’t sure you really deserved - and had immediately propped you up on the pillows and stooped to ruffle through his suitcase, emerging not long after with binding tape, cat-gut thread, and a needle so sharp you could feel it slicing your flesh. You had opened your mouth to protest, but Loki had silenced you with a glare that could fell Director Fury. So you had gone quiet, and caved, letting him kneel over you on the distinctly lumpy mattress and begin inspecting your wounds. It had taken a few tries and a Please to convince him to let you sit on your own, and it hurt much more than the manner in which he’d arranged you. You were starting to, slightly, regret it. 

“You don’t have to do this,” You say, pulling it from bleeding lips. He shushes you with a harsh, stern tut. “You’re not my mother,” You tell him. 

“You could have died,” Loki says. There’s a snarling undercurrent to it that you can’t even start dissecting. “What were you thinking?” He asks. It is easier, though still painful, for you to answer him - he had used nearly half of his Thor-limited magic reserve to perform a basic stasis spell on your injuries, but the spell wouldn’t last forever. You’ll need stitches, he’d said, choking it out like he was the hurt one when he’d seen the number the Cobra’s blade had done to your arm. 

“I’ve had worse,” You say, grinning weakly. 

“Are you lying to me?” He asks you, with the tone of someone who’s distinctly not in the mood for joking. 

“I thought,” You say. Steel yourself. “I thought you weren’t going to do what needed to be done. So I - Did it myself.” 

“What needed to be done.” Loki says, enunciating every word. 

“We couldn’t let him walk away,” You say, meeting his eyes. Emerald, clouded with fury. You don’t let yourself flinch from that anger. You don’t let yourself run from your choice. “You know what he would have done.” 

“I don’t,” Loki says. “I know nothing. I know - I know that you think that your life means so little I wouldn’t care if you were gone. That I could - Live, without you.” 

That’s… different. 

“And I know,” Loki continues, “That I told you to trust me, and I meant it.” 

“I do,” You say. There is no hesitation. “I trust you - Loki. Of course I trust you. It’s not - it wasn’t -“ 

“Stop talking,” He snaps. Gentles, when you jerk your head away, blink back a fresh wave of tears. “You need rest,” He says. “And - This is. This is going to hurt.” 

You nod. 

“Best get it over with, then.” 

“You should keep your eyes closed,” He says. 

“No! I want - I need to look.” You bring your eyes up to your arm, which he’s settled onto bed’s chewed, scratchy quilt without you realizing, but Loki tilts your head up with a barely-there graze of his fingers, achingly gentle to avoid aggravating your swollen jaw. He holds your gaze for a long time. Doesn’t look mad, anymore. 

“Are you sure?” He asks you. Like all of this could be over with, if you wanted. 

“How bad it could it be?” You ask back. 

The injury is horrendous. You’d thought - honest-to-God, you’d thought the pain was terrible, but you weren’t ready for what your arm has become. The line of the wound runs in a craggy jigsaw from just under your shoulder to the tip of your elbow. Small wonder you can’t move it, can barely think through it at all. 

“Y/N?” Loki asks, “Are you -“ 

“Fine,” You say. Blink, and your body knows pain. Try not to let how scared you are show, when you look back up at Loki. The Pink Cobra’s dead. You shouldn’t be scared, anymore. “It’s really bad, isn’t it?” 

Loki sighs. Long and low and sad. 

“Will I have to - “ 

“Bite,” Loki says, and shoves something - the sleeve of his shirt, crusted in blood which you realize, sickeningly, is yours - into your mouth. “It’ll help.” 

It doesn’t, but he holds your hand through it, hushing you through the pain with furrowed eyebrows, thread and needle flying deftly through skin, air, skin again. His fingers move precisely, deliberate,  quick, and when, on one stitch, you audibly whimper, he pauses to lean down and press a soft, utterly unexpected kiss to your hairline. You are unable to fully express how much it means to you, so you do the next best thing and kiss him yourself, pressing him back once he’s finished the last of his stitches and breathing all the the words you can’t say into him. You press every fear and gratitude and lingering nerve into the warmth of his lips, wending your fingers through his dark hair despite the pangs of agony still thrumming through every inch of your body. Your face hurts, but the kiss is all you’ve ever needed and more, and Loki is so, so gentle with you, pulling away with creased eyebrows and a look of genuine concern. 

“I wanted to,” You tell him, mustering all of your strength. “It didn’t hurt.” 

“Stop,” He tells you, voice cracking, “Stop lying.” 

“I’m not,” You say. “I wanted to, Loki, I did.” 

“And you wanted to -“ 

“No.” You are vehement about it, for a broken-ribbed, broken-jawed, freshly-stitched person coming off the high of his teeth and his tongue. “Not that, I swear, never that.”

 “Why did you do it, then?” Loki asks. He has steepled his fingers under his chin, and his narrowed eyes pierce through you to the soul. You couldn’t lie to this man, you think, if your life depended on it. 

You know that you have to tell him, this time. Really tell him. You don’t. 

“”Why didn’t you use your magic?”

“You know why,” He says, and you do. You’d remembered it as the white pill turned to white powder in your gums, as the Pink Cobra’s knife had carved its way into your flesh. Thor had put a set limit on it, as condition of Loki’s release - Proof, he had said, We can trust you. Loki had thought to save it for later, that you wouldn’t need him right then. He had thought you’d talk them out, to safety. 

You’d failed him. 

“You didn’t,” He tells you, voice raw. He goes to grip your chin, to force you to listen to him, but with a glance and ill-concealed wince at your purpled jaw he thinks better of it. “You think that you failed me? You let yourself be - be beaten and stabbed - just so people you’ve never met in your life wouldn’t die, and you call that a failure?” He runs a hand through his hair. Bites back a snarl. Drops your arm. “I need you to listen to me,” Loki says, “Very, very carefully. You’re going to tell me why now, love. And then we’re going to fix it.” 

You raise an eyebrow. Worse than he does, you’re aware. 

“Sleep,” He amends, with a pointed look at the bed underneath you, “And then we’re going to fix it.” 

“There’s only one bed,” You tell him, “And I feel like I just got run over by a truck.” 

Loki huffs, a puff of warm air that you feel, from how close he still is. A grin twitches at the edge of his lips. It sets off sparks inside you. 

“I thought -“ You say. Shake your head, and restart. “You would have let the Pink Cobra attack. You would have let him just walk away, and I couldn’t just - let that happen.” 

“Enlightening.” 

“No,” You tell him, “I mean it. I couldn’t - I’m not - I’m not worth more than anyone else. We’re the Avengers. It’s our job to save people, Loki.” 

He’s regarding you carefully, eyes still narrowed, all vestiges of softness gone from his face. When he opens his mouth, it’s to close it. Form thoughts. Discard them. Exhale. 

“My mother once told me,” He finally says, “That I would never know what it meant to be human until I found the person who made me want to bleed the world dry. Take all of its’ suffering, all of its’ cruelty, and leech it out of the very fabric of time, just to keep that person from anguish, from harm.” 

“I don’t -“ 

He holds a hand up. You still. 

“She never said they would infuriate me,” Loki says. “She never said they would make me laugh, or smile, or question my sanity on a regular basis. She never said that they’d try and get themselves killed, and that I’d have to watch, and that I would feel like my heart was being ripped from my body and torn to a bloody pulp; that I would make the sky rain blood and fire at the sight of it alone. But she was right about one thing - Many things, but also this. She told me that it wouldn’t matter. That I would - love you - anyway.” 

“You don’t,” You say, not daring to hope. It’s an automatic retort. 

“Foolish girl,” Loki chides, and you blink back fresh, stinging tears. How long have you wanted to hear Loki say that to you? How many sneaky looks have you stolen in the heat of your missions, just to see his smart mind and tricky magic at work? How many nights have you sat up together, sequestered from your insomnia in a bubble of hard-earned banter and peppermint tea, fighting the tight, coiling urge to push aside your steaming mugs and pull him into your needing? 

He could not - he can’t - feel the same. 

“Loki,” You say, stumbling over the words, “You can’t - This is - This is me we’re talking about.” 

“Is there anyone else here,” Loki asks you, “That I could be talking about?” He seems nonchalant, now, as if this - this cruel fucking joke, when you already feel you’re on fire - is merely a fact of his life. “We’re going to leave this excuse of a town, and get you - proper care. Fix it. Because I will not, on my honor, watch you suffer in pain. But first, you’re going to sleep.” 

“There’s only one bed,” You tell him, and feel your resolve as it shatters. You cling to the statement like it’s the last remnant of the girl you were and the woman that you’ll never be, “And the shower doesn’t work. And I’m covered in blood.” 

But when you look at Loki, his eyes twinkle, mischievous. 

“Will you stay with me?,” You ask him, biting your lip. 

“You astound me,” He tells you, and rolls his eyes, and it feels - it feels normal. Good. A tender heat unfurls in your heart like orchid petals in the sun, numbing the persistent ache in your ribcage. “To even think that I would do anything else.” 

Later, you will ask him why. Why do you love me?, you will ask, and Loki will hum, low in his throat, curled around you just like this first night; your back pressed into his chest, your legs tangled up hopelessly, his fingers tracing nonsense patterns onto your spine in the dawn-light’s syrupy gold. Because, he will tell you, trailing a line of soft kisses up the scar on your arm - an ugly thing, but it functions, mostly, and only ever seems to hurt on the days when he isn’t there - I was given no choice. 

But if you’d had one?”, You will ask, and spin around, propping yourself on your elbow. 

You tempt me, He’ll tell you, baring his sharp teeth. Shouldn’t you know better than that? 

You will lie there, next to each other, not needing a single word. Because you will know. Because he will have told you, a thousand times, a thousand ways, exactly how he feels about you. 

Tonight, though, isn’t that night. It takes a moment to get settled in his hold, and the rain spits and drums against what glass remains in your window, slicking the carpet with dark, greasy splotches. It figures, you think, that even the rain in this city has the smell and the texture of oil. You feel like a bag of bones, stretched too thin. But safe, in his arms, in a way that you’ve never felt, before now. Loki is with you, you realize. Wrapped around you like a traveler’s cloak, the comforting weight of a slim, balanced blade at your side in a fight. He is cool, around your afraid. Warm, where his clever fingers whine and needle their way through your skin to your heart. 

“I hate you,” You tell him, “You know that?” 

Loki laughs, a deep, rumbling purr. 

“Go to sleep.”