A Broken Thing, Poorly Mended, Loki/Natasha NC-17
Title: A Broken Thing, Poorly Mended
Pairing: Loki/Natasha
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Loki and Natasha have sex. It should be simple, but nothing between them ever is. Based on this prompt.
Word count: 3500
She finds Loki sitting on her bed less than a day after Tony-grudgingly, and after months of Thor’s pleading-deactivates the anti-Loki security measures protecting Stark Tower.
Natasha raises her eyebrow. “Not wasting any time, I see.”
Loki doesn’t respond, but Natasha’s learned to fill in the blanks. She crosses the room, tips his head up when he looks down.
“You wanted to see me,” she says.
Again, he doesn’t say anything, just looks up at her with shielded eyes.
“What do you want?” Natasha asks.
“You know what I want,” he says. He’s trying for cool and unaffected-but as always, she catches the edge of uncertainty in his voice.
Natasha hums, stroking his cheek. She could push this, try to force him to admit that he’s come crawling to her for sex, once again. Instead she pushes him back on the bed and straddles him.
Before he can get his hands on her, she pins his wrists down and leans over him, her lips hovering over his. “Why can’t you ask for this?” she says, her lips brushing against his as she speaks.
Loki surges up and closes the small gap between their lips. Natasha releases his wrists to brace her hands against his shoulders. Loki’s hands push up under her shirt as his mouth falls open under hers.
Natasha controls the pace of the kiss, keeping it slow. They haven’t done this in weeks, and she wants to make it last.
Loki lets her have control for a few moments. Then he flips her over, moving his mouth down to her neck. Natasha tips her head back, allowing him full access to her throat. It’s always like this between them, a subtle struggle for dominance, a constant give and take.
He sucks on the skin over her pulse, while Natasha’s fingers work on the buttons on his shirt. It’s rare that she gets to undress him; usually the garments he wears are too complicated even for her nimble hands. Loki makes a low, pleased sound in his throat when she drags her hands up his bare back, nails scraping lightly against his skin.
Loki opens her jeans and pushes them down, along with her underwear, just far enough that he can slip two fingers inside her. Natasha lets out a breath, something between a sigh and a moan. Loki has talented fingers that never fail to find just the right spots inside her. Now is no exception. Natasha arches up when Loki hits her g-spot, her nails digging into his back. She knows he won’t object; Loki has a certain appreciation for the thin line between pleasure and pain.
Loki gets another finger inside her and rubs his thumb over her clit, slowly. He’s moved his mouth down from her well marked neck to her collarbone. She knows he could do this for hours-touching, exploring, kissing, as though it was the first time. Sex with Loki is not the violent coming together she might have expected. Instead it’s intimate in a way that’s a little unsettling to Natasha. Loki won’t ask for this, won’t ever admit to wanting this, but she can feel the need in his touch. Everything he won’t say-it’s there, in his touch.
Natasha reaches down and stills his hand. Before he can react, she starts pulling off her clothes. “Condom’s in the nightstand,” she says.
Loki considers her for a moment before he gives a little shrug and gets his pants off, reaching over her to retrieve the condom.
Afterward, as they lie together, Loki’s arm ends up on Natasha’s waist.
She shoots him a look. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” he says, snatching his arm back. He avoids her eye and quickly gets up to collect his clothing, vanishing moments later.
-------
Natasha has never seen Loki perform hand-to-hand combat-in the few fights he’s helped them with, she’s only ever seen him use magic-but when she drops down on him, from her perch in the warehouse rafters, he responds to her attack with unusual skill. They grapple for a few minutes before Loki wraps his arms around her and says, “I’m not here to harm you.”
She realized that, but she led him into the warehouse anyway. Natasha doesn’t like being followed. “What are you doing here?” she asks, shaking off his arms.
Loki straightens. His look of careful disinterest doesn’t fool her. “You weren’t at the Tower,” he says.
“I’m on a mission,” she replies.
“I know,” Loki says, stiffly.
For a moment, neither speaks. Then Natasha groans, “Oh God. You want-Jesus. I’m busy.”
“If you want to waste your time on false information, that is your prerogative,” Loki says.
Natasha thinks about slamming him up against the wall, but decides against it and crosses her arms instead. “And how would you know the information is false?”
Natasha catches the slight hesitation before Loki speaks. “When I found out what you were doing, I took the liberty of making some inquires.”
She knows it’s pointless to ask how he found out about her mission, or who he made his inquires to. Loki’s only vaguely on their side, and he doesn’t feel the need to share his sources. “I don’t need you checking up on me,” she says.
“I wasn’t,” Loki says. “But as I said, if you wish to waste your time, that is your prerogative.”
Natasha isn’t about to give up on a mission based on Loki’s intelligence; Loki should know that. Should-but that’s the trouble with this thing between them. They have sex. It should be simple. But Loki makes everything difficult.
“Fine,” she snaps. “Just-fine. Come on.”
Natasha’s not going to give him what she knows he wants. Once they’re back where she’s staying, she strips and lies down on the bed, silently challenging him to protest.
Loki doesn’t take off his clothing. Instead he gets between her legs and lowers his mouth to her cunt. His tongue is as talented as his fingers, and though Natasha wants to punish him with silence, wants to withhold the intimacy he so clearly craves, she can’t hold back all the sounds of pleasure that come up from her chest.
She lets him bring her to orgasm, and then starts tugging off his clothing. She thinks, briefly, about sending him away unsatisfied, to teach him a lesson about interfering in her work. But she knows it’s not about the sex, for Loki. Better to give into the sex and send him away after.
She climbs on top of him as soon as he’s got the condom on and lowers herself onto his cock. She doesn’t even pause, just starts snapping her hips, at a brutal pace. Loki moves his hands over her body until she grabs them.
“No,” she says. “No, you don’t get to touch me.” She pins his hands down and keeps fucking him, turning her face away when he tries to kiss her.
“Natasha,” he says, sounding broken.
Natasha closes her eyes and rasps, “Shut up. Don’t-don’t.”
Loki comes with a choked gasp, as Natasha’s cunt contracts around him. Natasha rolls off him and out of bed, backing up against the wall while she catches her breath. “You need to go,” she says, quietly, after a few minutes have passed.
She risks a look at him. He’s sitting up on his elbows, eyes downturned. But then he raises his eyes, and Natasha recognizes the determination in them.
She starts to speak, but he’s gone before she can get the words out.
----
When Jarvis asks if he should alert the others, Natasha responds that no, that won’t be necessary, and presses her thumb against Loki’s windpipe.
“I’m starting to get tired of you showing up uninvited,” she says.
Loki has his hand on Natasha’s wrist, but his grip is lax. “And would you ever extend an invitation?” he says, his voice only slightly strained.
Natasha doesn’t answer, instead choosing to press Loki down into the bed, her hand still on his throat. “Were you watching me sleep?”
“I didn’t intend to,” Loki says.
Natasha looks down into his eyes for a long moment. Loki stares up at her, unblinking.
Slowly, Natasha eases the pressure on his throat, but she doesn’t move her hand away. She ripples her fingers over his pulse point, and Loki makes a small sound. “You’re so easy,” she murmurs.
She waits for him to make some sharp reply, but Loki only closes his eyes. His lips move, and Natasha almost misses what he says. “Please.”
Natasha draws back quickly. “I think you should go,” she says, turning away.
Then his hands are on her, not to grab her, not to force her down-just touching, his fingers tracing paths down her body that his lips follow. For a moment, she’s too surprised to react. She was expecting a fight, not this sudden tenderness.
“What are you so afraid of?” he says, into her ear. Trying, perhaps, to turn her pride against her. A weak effort. Where is that acerbic tongue he used against her when they first met?
Natasha places her hand on Loki’s shoulder, intending to push him away. She doesn’t mean to look at Loki, but her eyes turn, against her will, toward him. She finds him not guarded, as he always is in her bed, but open and needing.
At the beginning of this, Natasha held control. Loki came to her, begging with his touch. Now, even with Loki asking for this, she’s not sure that she hasn’t lost control.
Natasha brings her free hand up to Loki’s face, touching the tips of her fingers to his lips. She could get sex from just about anyone she wanted. She’s never had trouble finding partners who can satisfy her in bed. But she’s never had this-this unnamable something that she and Loki have. Natasha hasn’t forgotten that Loki is dangerous. She’s still cautious, will keep her guard up. Loki’s not going to get to her.
So she lets Loki touch her, lets him take his time with her. She only refuses to let him remain in her bed afterward.
Loki starts to leave, but then he pulls her close, hugging her from behind and pressing a kiss against her neck.
“What the hell are you doing?” Natasha says, going stiff in his arms. She let him touch her, yes, but there are lines he’s not allowed to cross.
Loki doesn’t answer, but he releases her. Natasha waits for him to disappear. She can feel him close to her-and then he’s gone.
------
He’s not in love with her; of that much, she’s certain. Loki regards love with the same disdain she does. No, this isn’t love, or even lust. Loki could sleep with anyone he wanted, and he does. Natasha has tracked Loki through crowded clubs for SHIELD, and she’s seen him go home with women and men. Once she watched Loki, in female form, press another woman up against the bar and bring her to orgasm, in full view of everyone. No one but Natasha had seen, because Loki had only wanted her to see.
They’ve been doing this for months, and Natasha can count the number of full sentences they’ve spoken to each other in that time. Even that first time, when Natasha was tracking Loki through an extravagant party neither of them had been invited to, they came together in near silence. What they do-it’s not something to be spoken aloud. Not something that can be spoken. It is there when they touch and immediately gone when they part, a thing without a name.
Clint doesn’t say anything, not at first, but he doesn’t have to. They know each other too well. He’s figured out that there’s someone. Natasha can see it in his eyes when they talk, can sense it in the pauses when he doesn’t ask.
Until he does. “So are you ever going to introduce us to this guy? Cause I know he comes to the Tower to fuck you,” Clint says, as they’re leaving SHIELD headquarters.
Natasha glances back to see how closely the others are following. They’re far enough away that they haven’t heard.
“They’re going to find out eventually,” Clint says. “I’m pretty sure Jarvis knows.”
Natasha knows that threatening to maim or kill Clint won’t do any good, so she doesn’t bother. “It’s not that kind of thing.” She quickens her pace, but Clint keeps up with her.
“You mean, not a committed relationship? I’m shocked, Nat; I always pictured you getting hitched and living in a nice suburban home with 2.5 kids.” He grins at her. She doesn’t smile back. “So what is it, then?”
“It’s sex,” she says. “That’s it.”
The others are getting too close to them, close enough to hear. God knows Tony has some kind of supernatural ability to know when someone’s talking about sex. Clint wisely shuts up.
He comes to her bedroom later. He’s not grinning now. “Does he love you?” he asks.
“I told you, it’s not like that,” Natasha says, turning away from him. “Just drop it, Clint.”
Clint comes up behind her. “This guy really gets under your skin, doesn’t he?”
Natasha presses her lips together. This was never something to be spoken of.
“It’s not so bad, Nat,” he says, quietly.
“What?”
“Loving someone.”
Natasha stands at the window, waiting for Clint to leave. When he doesn’t, she says, “I wouldn’t know.”
Clint chuckles. “You can pull that shit with everyone else and they’ll believe you.” He puts his hand on her shoulder, and Natasha stares steadfastly forward. “But I know you.”
Slowly, Natasha turns to look at him. “It’s not a problem,” she says, shrugging off his hand. “It’s not going to interfere in my work.”
Clint shakes his head. “Yeah, okay. Right.” He starts to leave, but he stops in the doorway to look back at her. She thinks he’s going to say something, but he doesn’t.
Once he’s gone, Natasha lies back on her bed and just breathes.
-------
“Shit. Behind you, Widow.”
Natasha turns, ready to take on another one of Amora’s minions, but she finds Loki. There’s no guarantee that Loki’s here to help them, so Natasha keeps her guard up.
Loki doesn’t say anything, just gives her lingering look before he disappears. “Hawkeye?” she says.
“Hang on,” Clint says. “Looks like he’s joining Amora.”
“Great,” Tony says. “I’m on it.”
Natasha’s useless against Loki and Amora’s magic, but she gets to where she last saw Amora as quickly as she can. Tony aims a repulsor blast at Amora; she casts it aside, carelessly. Her eyes are on Loki, and there’s a smirk on her lips.
“Loki!” Thor’s trying to get to his brother, but Skurge hauls him back.
“I did hope you’d reconsider my offer,” Amora says, reaching her hand toward Loki.
Loki smiles-and then something happens, a movement too quick for Natasha to catch, but Amora’s screaming in rage and her body is bound in crackling ropes of energy. “She should be more manageable now,” Loki says. His voice is in their com, but he’s looking at Natasha.
Skurge throws aside Thor and tries to go after Loki, but Loki vanishes.
With Amora subdued, they round up her minions with minimal difficulty. Thor grins as he punches Skurge in the face. “You see, my shield brothers, how Loki has changed,” he says. “I will return Amora and the rest to Asgard. They should pose no further threat to Earth.”
Natasha says nothing during the post-battle briefing at SHIELD, and she leaves her teammates without a word once they’re back at the Tower.
She’s not surprised to find Loki in her room.
“Get out,” she says, as she starts to strip out of her jumpsuit. It will need repairs and cleaning, but all Natasha wants to do now is wash the blood and dirt off her body and rest.
“Did you not appreciate my help?” Loki says.
Natasha crosses the room to the bathroom, where the shower is already running. “Thank you,” she says, coolly. “I’m sure Thor would like to thank you, as well.” She steps into the shower, not sparing Loki even a glance.
The hot water runs over her body, and she closes her eyes.
“It would have been very difficult for you to defeat Amora alone.” Loki’s in the shower with her. Probably naked, but Natasha doesn’t open her eyes to check. “You needed my help.”
Natasha looks back at him. “You didn’t come here for my praise,” she says. She reaches for the soap, but Loki picks it up and lathers it between his hands. “Are you looking to join the team?”
She braces herself against the wall of the shower, and Loki begins to wash her body. “Would you have me?” he asks. She can hear the smirk in his voice.
“Why not? You have your uses.”
He rolls her nipples between his fingers, and she bites back a whimper. “Yes,” he agrees. “But would the others have me?” Loki moves his hand down her stomach. “Would he tolerate fighting with me by his side?” His fingers slide in between the folds of Natasha’s cunt, and she lets out a strained breath.
She doesn’t need to ask who Loki’s talking about. He’s always been there, always on the edge of this. “You wouldn’t care,” she says.
“You would,” Loki says. He’s withdrawn his hand to return to washing her. “You didn’t want me there today.”
Natasha gives a tiny shrug. “I don’t always like Stark, but I can work with him.”
“You’re not fucking Stark.” Loki presses up against her and puts her mouth close to her ear. “And Stark never took your precious Hawk apart.”
Natasha throws Loki off. “I could have the others here in minutes,” she says. “You want to push this?”
“He’ll realize, eventually,” Loki says. “He knows you.”
“There are things he doesn’t know,” she says. She should be alerting Jarvis-but this isn’t something for the others. This is her mistake to correct.
Loki pulls her forward into the shower stream and puts his hand on her forehead, tilting her head back, so that her hair gets soaked. “Things you don’t want him to know,” he says, tangling his fingers in her wet hair. “That you let the devil into your bed. And why, Natasha?”
Natasha yanks his hand away, hissing when his fingers catch in her hair. “You were a good fuck,” she says. “But I kept letting you come back, because you’re so desperate for me to touch you. You wish I loved you.”
He nods. “Perhaps. But you need me as much as I need you.”
Natasha shuts off the water and steps out of the shower. She’s hardly cleaner than she was when she got in, but she doesn’t care. She throws on a robe. “Is that what you tell yourself, every time you come to me?”
Loki appears before her. “You want him to believe that you changed,” he says. “You know you haven’t.”
Natasha walks past him, into the bedroom.
“You are still the woman he was sent to kill,” Loki says. “You’ve been trying to earn the life that he gave you, but you never changed. Not deep down.”
Natasha turns around. “Jarvis!”
“I’ve alerted the others,” the AI responds. “They’re on their way.”
Loki grabs Natasha. “I am more than happy to be your demon.” He kisses her, roughly, and then lets her fall to the ground.
He’s gone, of course, by the time the others burst into her room. Clint helps her up. “What the hell happened, Tash?”
Natasha looks up at him. “I thought-I made a mistake. It’s all right.”
Steve checks her room over, and they all ask her if she’s sure she’s okay.
“Yes,” she rasps. “I just need to be alone.”
It takes another ten minutes for her to convince the others that she really is okay.
They file out of the room, Clint last. “If you need me,” he says.
She nods, and then she’s alone.
Natasha doesn’t know why Loki chose to cling to her, when he could have chosen someone who would give him the worship he wants. Even Loki has his fans, unstable as some of them are. They wouldn’t resist him or deny him love.
But it wouldn’t be enough, not for him. He saw the darkness in her and he wanted to pull it out into the light.
Natasha gets into bed. He will tire of her, sooner or later. The game will cease to be fun, and he will drop her, like a toy that has grown dull.
Loki may be a god who has lived for centuries, but Natasha is infinitely patient. She can wait.
Sometime in the night, she feels the weight of a body in her bed. An arm pulls her close. Natasha keeps her eyes shut and pretends to sleep.
He will be gone in the morning, and it will be as if he was never there.
Pairing: Loki/Natasha
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Loki and Natasha have sex. It should be simple, but nothing between them ever is. Based on this prompt.
Word count: 3500
She finds Loki sitting on her bed less than a day after Tony-grudgingly, and after months of Thor’s pleading-deactivates the anti-Loki security measures protecting Stark Tower.
Natasha raises her eyebrow. “Not wasting any time, I see.”
Loki doesn’t respond, but Natasha’s learned to fill in the blanks. She crosses the room, tips his head up when he looks down.
“You wanted to see me,” she says.
Again, he doesn’t say anything, just looks up at her with shielded eyes.
“What do you want?” Natasha asks.
“You know what I want,” he says. He’s trying for cool and unaffected-but as always, she catches the edge of uncertainty in his voice.
Natasha hums, stroking his cheek. She could push this, try to force him to admit that he’s come crawling to her for sex, once again. Instead she pushes him back on the bed and straddles him.
Before he can get his hands on her, she pins his wrists down and leans over him, her lips hovering over his. “Why can’t you ask for this?” she says, her lips brushing against his as she speaks.
Loki surges up and closes the small gap between their lips. Natasha releases his wrists to brace her hands against his shoulders. Loki’s hands push up under her shirt as his mouth falls open under hers.
Natasha controls the pace of the kiss, keeping it slow. They haven’t done this in weeks, and she wants to make it last.
Loki lets her have control for a few moments. Then he flips her over, moving his mouth down to her neck. Natasha tips her head back, allowing him full access to her throat. It’s always like this between them, a subtle struggle for dominance, a constant give and take.
He sucks on the skin over her pulse, while Natasha’s fingers work on the buttons on his shirt. It’s rare that she gets to undress him; usually the garments he wears are too complicated even for her nimble hands. Loki makes a low, pleased sound in his throat when she drags her hands up his bare back, nails scraping lightly against his skin.
Loki opens her jeans and pushes them down, along with her underwear, just far enough that he can slip two fingers inside her. Natasha lets out a breath, something between a sigh and a moan. Loki has talented fingers that never fail to find just the right spots inside her. Now is no exception. Natasha arches up when Loki hits her g-spot, her nails digging into his back. She knows he won’t object; Loki has a certain appreciation for the thin line between pleasure and pain.
Loki gets another finger inside her and rubs his thumb over her clit, slowly. He’s moved his mouth down from her well marked neck to her collarbone. She knows he could do this for hours-touching, exploring, kissing, as though it was the first time. Sex with Loki is not the violent coming together she might have expected. Instead it’s intimate in a way that’s a little unsettling to Natasha. Loki won’t ask for this, won’t ever admit to wanting this, but she can feel the need in his touch. Everything he won’t say-it’s there, in his touch.
Natasha reaches down and stills his hand. Before he can react, she starts pulling off her clothes. “Condom’s in the nightstand,” she says.
Loki considers her for a moment before he gives a little shrug and gets his pants off, reaching over her to retrieve the condom.
Afterward, as they lie together, Loki’s arm ends up on Natasha’s waist.
She shoots him a look. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” he says, snatching his arm back. He avoids her eye and quickly gets up to collect his clothing, vanishing moments later.
-------
Natasha has never seen Loki perform hand-to-hand combat-in the few fights he’s helped them with, she’s only ever seen him use magic-but when she drops down on him, from her perch in the warehouse rafters, he responds to her attack with unusual skill. They grapple for a few minutes before Loki wraps his arms around her and says, “I’m not here to harm you.”
She realized that, but she led him into the warehouse anyway. Natasha doesn’t like being followed. “What are you doing here?” she asks, shaking off his arms.
Loki straightens. His look of careful disinterest doesn’t fool her. “You weren’t at the Tower,” he says.
“I’m on a mission,” she replies.
“I know,” Loki says, stiffly.
For a moment, neither speaks. Then Natasha groans, “Oh God. You want-Jesus. I’m busy.”
“If you want to waste your time on false information, that is your prerogative,” Loki says.
Natasha thinks about slamming him up against the wall, but decides against it and crosses her arms instead. “And how would you know the information is false?”
Natasha catches the slight hesitation before Loki speaks. “When I found out what you were doing, I took the liberty of making some inquires.”
She knows it’s pointless to ask how he found out about her mission, or who he made his inquires to. Loki’s only vaguely on their side, and he doesn’t feel the need to share his sources. “I don’t need you checking up on me,” she says.
“I wasn’t,” Loki says. “But as I said, if you wish to waste your time, that is your prerogative.”
Natasha isn’t about to give up on a mission based on Loki’s intelligence; Loki should know that. Should-but that’s the trouble with this thing between them. They have sex. It should be simple. But Loki makes everything difficult.
“Fine,” she snaps. “Just-fine. Come on.”
Natasha’s not going to give him what she knows he wants. Once they’re back where she’s staying, she strips and lies down on the bed, silently challenging him to protest.
Loki doesn’t take off his clothing. Instead he gets between her legs and lowers his mouth to her cunt. His tongue is as talented as his fingers, and though Natasha wants to punish him with silence, wants to withhold the intimacy he so clearly craves, she can’t hold back all the sounds of pleasure that come up from her chest.
She lets him bring her to orgasm, and then starts tugging off his clothing. She thinks, briefly, about sending him away unsatisfied, to teach him a lesson about interfering in her work. But she knows it’s not about the sex, for Loki. Better to give into the sex and send him away after.
She climbs on top of him as soon as he’s got the condom on and lowers herself onto his cock. She doesn’t even pause, just starts snapping her hips, at a brutal pace. Loki moves his hands over her body until she grabs them.
“No,” she says. “No, you don’t get to touch me.” She pins his hands down and keeps fucking him, turning her face away when he tries to kiss her.
“Natasha,” he says, sounding broken.
Natasha closes her eyes and rasps, “Shut up. Don’t-don’t.”
Loki comes with a choked gasp, as Natasha’s cunt contracts around him. Natasha rolls off him and out of bed, backing up against the wall while she catches her breath. “You need to go,” she says, quietly, after a few minutes have passed.
She risks a look at him. He’s sitting up on his elbows, eyes downturned. But then he raises his eyes, and Natasha recognizes the determination in them.
She starts to speak, but he’s gone before she can get the words out.
----
When Jarvis asks if he should alert the others, Natasha responds that no, that won’t be necessary, and presses her thumb against Loki’s windpipe.
“I’m starting to get tired of you showing up uninvited,” she says.
Loki has his hand on Natasha’s wrist, but his grip is lax. “And would you ever extend an invitation?” he says, his voice only slightly strained.
Natasha doesn’t answer, instead choosing to press Loki down into the bed, her hand still on his throat. “Were you watching me sleep?”
“I didn’t intend to,” Loki says.
Natasha looks down into his eyes for a long moment. Loki stares up at her, unblinking.
Slowly, Natasha eases the pressure on his throat, but she doesn’t move her hand away. She ripples her fingers over his pulse point, and Loki makes a small sound. “You’re so easy,” she murmurs.
She waits for him to make some sharp reply, but Loki only closes his eyes. His lips move, and Natasha almost misses what he says. “Please.”
Natasha draws back quickly. “I think you should go,” she says, turning away.
Then his hands are on her, not to grab her, not to force her down-just touching, his fingers tracing paths down her body that his lips follow. For a moment, she’s too surprised to react. She was expecting a fight, not this sudden tenderness.
“What are you so afraid of?” he says, into her ear. Trying, perhaps, to turn her pride against her. A weak effort. Where is that acerbic tongue he used against her when they first met?
Natasha places her hand on Loki’s shoulder, intending to push him away. She doesn’t mean to look at Loki, but her eyes turn, against her will, toward him. She finds him not guarded, as he always is in her bed, but open and needing.
At the beginning of this, Natasha held control. Loki came to her, begging with his touch. Now, even with Loki asking for this, she’s not sure that she hasn’t lost control.
Natasha brings her free hand up to Loki’s face, touching the tips of her fingers to his lips. She could get sex from just about anyone she wanted. She’s never had trouble finding partners who can satisfy her in bed. But she’s never had this-this unnamable something that she and Loki have. Natasha hasn’t forgotten that Loki is dangerous. She’s still cautious, will keep her guard up. Loki’s not going to get to her.
So she lets Loki touch her, lets him take his time with her. She only refuses to let him remain in her bed afterward.
Loki starts to leave, but then he pulls her close, hugging her from behind and pressing a kiss against her neck.
“What the hell are you doing?” Natasha says, going stiff in his arms. She let him touch her, yes, but there are lines he’s not allowed to cross.
Loki doesn’t answer, but he releases her. Natasha waits for him to disappear. She can feel him close to her-and then he’s gone.
------
He’s not in love with her; of that much, she’s certain. Loki regards love with the same disdain she does. No, this isn’t love, or even lust. Loki could sleep with anyone he wanted, and he does. Natasha has tracked Loki through crowded clubs for SHIELD, and she’s seen him go home with women and men. Once she watched Loki, in female form, press another woman up against the bar and bring her to orgasm, in full view of everyone. No one but Natasha had seen, because Loki had only wanted her to see.
They’ve been doing this for months, and Natasha can count the number of full sentences they’ve spoken to each other in that time. Even that first time, when Natasha was tracking Loki through an extravagant party neither of them had been invited to, they came together in near silence. What they do-it’s not something to be spoken aloud. Not something that can be spoken. It is there when they touch and immediately gone when they part, a thing without a name.
Clint doesn’t say anything, not at first, but he doesn’t have to. They know each other too well. He’s figured out that there’s someone. Natasha can see it in his eyes when they talk, can sense it in the pauses when he doesn’t ask.
Until he does. “So are you ever going to introduce us to this guy? Cause I know he comes to the Tower to fuck you,” Clint says, as they’re leaving SHIELD headquarters.
Natasha glances back to see how closely the others are following. They’re far enough away that they haven’t heard.
“They’re going to find out eventually,” Clint says. “I’m pretty sure Jarvis knows.”
Natasha knows that threatening to maim or kill Clint won’t do any good, so she doesn’t bother. “It’s not that kind of thing.” She quickens her pace, but Clint keeps up with her.
“You mean, not a committed relationship? I’m shocked, Nat; I always pictured you getting hitched and living in a nice suburban home with 2.5 kids.” He grins at her. She doesn’t smile back. “So what is it, then?”
“It’s sex,” she says. “That’s it.”
The others are getting too close to them, close enough to hear. God knows Tony has some kind of supernatural ability to know when someone’s talking about sex. Clint wisely shuts up.
He comes to her bedroom later. He’s not grinning now. “Does he love you?” he asks.
“I told you, it’s not like that,” Natasha says, turning away from him. “Just drop it, Clint.”
Clint comes up behind her. “This guy really gets under your skin, doesn’t he?”
Natasha presses her lips together. This was never something to be spoken of.
“It’s not so bad, Nat,” he says, quietly.
“What?”
“Loving someone.”
Natasha stands at the window, waiting for Clint to leave. When he doesn’t, she says, “I wouldn’t know.”
Clint chuckles. “You can pull that shit with everyone else and they’ll believe you.” He puts his hand on her shoulder, and Natasha stares steadfastly forward. “But I know you.”
Slowly, Natasha turns to look at him. “It’s not a problem,” she says, shrugging off his hand. “It’s not going to interfere in my work.”
Clint shakes his head. “Yeah, okay. Right.” He starts to leave, but he stops in the doorway to look back at her. She thinks he’s going to say something, but he doesn’t.
Once he’s gone, Natasha lies back on her bed and just breathes.
-------
“Shit. Behind you, Widow.”
Natasha turns, ready to take on another one of Amora’s minions, but she finds Loki. There’s no guarantee that Loki’s here to help them, so Natasha keeps her guard up.
Loki doesn’t say anything, just gives her lingering look before he disappears. “Hawkeye?” she says.
“Hang on,” Clint says. “Looks like he’s joining Amora.”
“Great,” Tony says. “I’m on it.”
Natasha’s useless against Loki and Amora’s magic, but she gets to where she last saw Amora as quickly as she can. Tony aims a repulsor blast at Amora; she casts it aside, carelessly. Her eyes are on Loki, and there’s a smirk on her lips.
“Loki!” Thor’s trying to get to his brother, but Skurge hauls him back.
“I did hope you’d reconsider my offer,” Amora says, reaching her hand toward Loki.
Loki smiles-and then something happens, a movement too quick for Natasha to catch, but Amora’s screaming in rage and her body is bound in crackling ropes of energy. “She should be more manageable now,” Loki says. His voice is in their com, but he’s looking at Natasha.
Skurge throws aside Thor and tries to go after Loki, but Loki vanishes.
With Amora subdued, they round up her minions with minimal difficulty. Thor grins as he punches Skurge in the face. “You see, my shield brothers, how Loki has changed,” he says. “I will return Amora and the rest to Asgard. They should pose no further threat to Earth.”
Natasha says nothing during the post-battle briefing at SHIELD, and she leaves her teammates without a word once they’re back at the Tower.
She’s not surprised to find Loki in her room.
“Get out,” she says, as she starts to strip out of her jumpsuit. It will need repairs and cleaning, but all Natasha wants to do now is wash the blood and dirt off her body and rest.
“Did you not appreciate my help?” Loki says.
Natasha crosses the room to the bathroom, where the shower is already running. “Thank you,” she says, coolly. “I’m sure Thor would like to thank you, as well.” She steps into the shower, not sparing Loki even a glance.
The hot water runs over her body, and she closes her eyes.
“It would have been very difficult for you to defeat Amora alone.” Loki’s in the shower with her. Probably naked, but Natasha doesn’t open her eyes to check. “You needed my help.”
Natasha looks back at him. “You didn’t come here for my praise,” she says. She reaches for the soap, but Loki picks it up and lathers it between his hands. “Are you looking to join the team?”
She braces herself against the wall of the shower, and Loki begins to wash her body. “Would you have me?” he asks. She can hear the smirk in his voice.
“Why not? You have your uses.”
He rolls her nipples between his fingers, and she bites back a whimper. “Yes,” he agrees. “But would the others have me?” Loki moves his hand down her stomach. “Would he tolerate fighting with me by his side?” His fingers slide in between the folds of Natasha’s cunt, and she lets out a strained breath.
She doesn’t need to ask who Loki’s talking about. He’s always been there, always on the edge of this. “You wouldn’t care,” she says.
“You would,” Loki says. He’s withdrawn his hand to return to washing her. “You didn’t want me there today.”
Natasha gives a tiny shrug. “I don’t always like Stark, but I can work with him.”
“You’re not fucking Stark.” Loki presses up against her and puts her mouth close to her ear. “And Stark never took your precious Hawk apart.”
Natasha throws Loki off. “I could have the others here in minutes,” she says. “You want to push this?”
“He’ll realize, eventually,” Loki says. “He knows you.”
“There are things he doesn’t know,” she says. She should be alerting Jarvis-but this isn’t something for the others. This is her mistake to correct.
Loki pulls her forward into the shower stream and puts his hand on her forehead, tilting her head back, so that her hair gets soaked. “Things you don’t want him to know,” he says, tangling his fingers in her wet hair. “That you let the devil into your bed. And why, Natasha?”
Natasha yanks his hand away, hissing when his fingers catch in her hair. “You were a good fuck,” she says. “But I kept letting you come back, because you’re so desperate for me to touch you. You wish I loved you.”
He nods. “Perhaps. But you need me as much as I need you.”
Natasha shuts off the water and steps out of the shower. She’s hardly cleaner than she was when she got in, but she doesn’t care. She throws on a robe. “Is that what you tell yourself, every time you come to me?”
Loki appears before her. “You want him to believe that you changed,” he says. “You know you haven’t.”
Natasha walks past him, into the bedroom.
“You are still the woman he was sent to kill,” Loki says. “You’ve been trying to earn the life that he gave you, but you never changed. Not deep down.”
Natasha turns around. “Jarvis!”
“I’ve alerted the others,” the AI responds. “They’re on their way.”
Loki grabs Natasha. “I am more than happy to be your demon.” He kisses her, roughly, and then lets her fall to the ground.
He’s gone, of course, by the time the others burst into her room. Clint helps her up. “What the hell happened, Tash?”
Natasha looks up at him. “I thought-I made a mistake. It’s all right.”
Steve checks her room over, and they all ask her if she’s sure she’s okay.
“Yes,” she rasps. “I just need to be alone.”
It takes another ten minutes for her to convince the others that she really is okay.
They file out of the room, Clint last. “If you need me,” he says.
She nods, and then she’s alone.
Natasha doesn’t know why Loki chose to cling to her, when he could have chosen someone who would give him the worship he wants. Even Loki has his fans, unstable as some of them are. They wouldn’t resist him or deny him love.
But it wouldn’t be enough, not for him. He saw the darkness in her and he wanted to pull it out into the light.
Natasha gets into bed. He will tire of her, sooner or later. The game will cease to be fun, and he will drop her, like a toy that has grown dull.
Loki may be a god who has lived for centuries, but Natasha is infinitely patient. She can wait.
Sometime in the night, she feels the weight of a body in her bed. An arm pulls her close. Natasha keeps her eyes shut and pretends to sleep.
He will be gone in the morning, and it will be as if he was never there.