Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

SHIELD had managed, by a very specific set of miracles, to obtain the plans for the TIDY nanites. They immediately started formulating strategies to defend their technology from the onslaught, including a promising lead involving x-rays and other scanner-related waves that might cause the nanites to self-destruct.

Those plans were entirely outdated ten hours later, when Tony finished production and implemented the project. The nanites were released right on schedule, and none of SHIELD’s countermeasures worked. It was about forty-eight hours before the weapons of the world were non-functional, and another week before said weapons were completely beyond repair.

The worldwide demand for knives, swords, bows and arrows went through the roof, those being weapons the nanites would spare. Demolition and mining projects ground to a halt due to a sudden lack of powerful explosive devices.

People got unpleasantly creative with what was left: construction vehicles and power tools and the like. But there was no denying that overall, the rate of violent deaths took a nosedive. Anywhere that large scale violence did break out, Iron Man showed up to sort it out, so there was nothing that resembled war.

It became apparent within the fortnight that there was a new world order, and that Tony Stark was at the top of it. The realization was met by the masses with a general sense of resigned discomfort, and lot of jokes about how the new world order looked an awful lot like the old world order.

But there were some who were not ready to surrender the world so easily, and Nick Fury was one of them.

Loki once again lounged in Fury’s office at SHIELD headquarters while his employer paced in front of him and weighed the possibilities at hand. “One option we’re considering in bringing in Pepper Potts. Is that something you can do?”

Loki shook his head and sat back on his chair with a bored sigh. An impressive act on his part, since the prospect of being oath-bound to kidnap Pepper was more than a little horrifying. “Director, I think it’s time you stopped underestimating my abilities.”

Fury turned to eye him sharply. “What do you mean?”

“You only have one favor left. Use it. Stop thinking about means, and start thinking about ends.”

“Can you bring in Stark?”

By the bloody wrist of Tyr, Pepper would never forgive him for that. Loki shook his head at Fury, patronizingly slow. “Still a means. What do you hope to achieve?”

Fury turned away from Loki and placed a hand on his desk. “Long term, I want Stark off the seat of power and someone in his place who won’t screw it up. I’ve got a man in mind; a good leader.”

Loki leaned forward. “Then ask for that. Ask me to take Stark’s throne away from him and give it to someone more trustworthy.”

Fury faced Loki again. “Not just anyone.”

Loki laughed, knowing where Fury’s mind had immediately gone. “Oh, and this man you have in mind, what qualities make him more suitable than me?”

“For one, he’s human. And sane. You don’t qualify, and for that matter neither do I.”

“Relax, Director. I’d already excluded myself at ‘trustworthy.’ I’ll see to it that your trustworthy, human, and sane acquaintance takes the throne, and keeps it.”

“I want the transition to happen with minimal loss of life. Can you do that?”

Loki smiled and stood. “One conversation with me, and Tony Stark will be begging to relinquish his power. Just you wait.”

This time, Loki didn’t bother with the lower floors of Stark Tower. He landed lightly on the balcony outside Stark’s home in the form of a harmless pigeon, and attempted a transformation that would only work if he was still able to do magic on this floor.

A moment later, Loki was in his most familiar form, that of an Asgardian prince, dressed in the dark grey jeans and green button-down shirt that he had taken to wearing on earth.

The glass door stood open, so he entered. Loki knew that given the nature of his departure from this place, a harsh welcome was due to find him sooner or later. Glancing around, he took in the newly repaired and repainted walls where he had left destruction on his last visit, then looked to his left and came to a standstill.

A platter of chocolate chip cookies sat on the bar. Tony sat next to them with his hands pressed between his knees and his legs swinging from the counter. He wore well-tailored trousers and brown silk shirt; what was, for him, a rare compromise between formal and casual attire. If Loki had to guess the motive behind the outfit, he would have said sex appeal, but somehow that didn’t seem to compute with the plate of cookies.

“I’ve been expecting you,” Tony said with a little too much dramatic flair.

Loki cocked his head as he walked closer. He wasn’t being bodily attacked. That was either a good sign, or more likely a very, very bad one. “Really? I don’t recall announcing my intention to visit.”

“You didn’t, but Fury did. By accident. SHIELD has been really not keeping their firewalls up to snuff, past couple weeks.” Tony shrugged. “Not my fault they’re distracted. Aside from the part where it’s entirely because of my actions. That might make it my fault.”

Loki’s adversary was in far too good a humor. And he had known Loki was coming. With leaden trepidation and considerable embarrassment, it occurred to Loki that he was certainly stepping into a trap.

Tony braced his hands on the counter to take his weight as he slid neatly down to stand on the floor. “The implementation of the nanites went spectacularly well, as you may have noticed.”

Loki watched the movement, both tensing for a fight and smiling slightly that they were still on conversation -- a battleground that gave Loki the home-court advantage he was sorely missing. “Indeed,” he said. “And the world falls to its knees. What are you calling yourself now? President?”

Tony wrinkled his nose.

“No? King? Emperor? Hegemon? Pharaoh?”

Tony opened his mouth to say something dismissive, then paused and thought. “Actually ‘Pharaoh’ does have a kind of a ring to it.” He spread his hands in a gesture of grand vision. “Brings to mind monuments that stand for thousands of years and a certain… godhood.”

Loki raised an eyebrow.

Tony abruptly batted the thought away. “Yeah, no, you’re right. They let anyone be a god nowadays. I’ll stick with ‘Iron Man.’ Anyway, I’m not a king! That would be way too much work. I’m just a guy who likes peace.”

“...And has the resources to easily kill those who don’t.”

Shrugging again, Tony selected a slightly broken cookie from the tray and picked it up. “When it’s necessary, yeah.”

“That leaves you with only one problem.”

Tony held up a finger and made an ooh, I know the answer sound, muffled because he was taking a bite of cookie. Once he had chewed a little he said, “You still owe a ‘boon.’”

“Yes. To Nick Fury, who has an admirable lack of faith in your ability to responsibly manage total world domination.”

Tony paced forward thoughtfully, cookie in hand. “Admittedly, you are a problem. A very annoying problem, and Pepper and I have talked about it, and we’ve decided there’s only one thing to do about you.”

Loki kept his face carefully blank. Of course. Of course the lovers had reconciled, and of course Pepper still viewed Loki as an enemy. What fate would she chose for him who had forced pain and chaos into her heart? “And what’s that? Kill me? Imprison me again? Because that worked so well for you last time.”

“Nope. We’re going to seduce you over to our side,” Tony announced, and waited gleefully for a reaction.

Loki’s eyes widened briefly before his expression smoothed over, effectively hiding whatever emotion might have followed surprise. “How will you manage that?”

“With seduction, mostly, but if that doesn’t work, we also have cookies.” Tony took a slow second bite, observed the way Loki’s eyes followed the movement, and inwardly concluded that his plan was a very good plan.

“Pepper agreed to this course of action,” Loki said dubiously, but his eyes were still trained on Tony’s mouth in a wonderfully unsettling sort of way.

“Did. Jarvis, bring Pepper up here.”

“She is on her way, sir.”

Loki said, “When a god owes a boon, Stark, he cannot wish it away. I will do what Nick Fury has asked of me.” But there was an amused smile creeping onto his face, like he didn’t find much cause for concern in his own threats.

Tony nodded once. “Okay, and what’s he asked of you exactly?”

At the sound of the elevator door, Loki turned, saw Pepper stepping out, and concluded, “I’ll tell you later.”

Pepper was wearing that white shirt and cutoff shorts combination that set of all the warm hues of her skin and hair and made her legs seem to go on for miles. She walked smoothly into the room and treated their guest to a smile that managed to be both ironic and affectionately pleased. “Loki. Hello again.”

“Pepper,” Loki greeted in tones of quiet disbelief.

His accent made the last “r” nearly fall away. It was, Pepper realized, the first time Loki had used her name to address her since that first day in his cell, and now she liked far too much the way it sounded in his mouth.

Loki stepped closer, but his expression was guarded, eyes flitting over her. He had the look of someone expecting a knife in the stomach just as much as anything more pleasant. “You won’t walk away this time?”

Pepper stepped closer too, until the air between them took on the slight magnetic charge of proximity and she had to angle her head up to look at Loki’s face.

She glanced aside and at Tony and answered, “I don’t think I have to.” A slight, worried frown tugged at her forehead. “Tony, are you sure about this?”

Tony rolled his eyes, because he and Pepper had had this conversation already. Don’t ask him to trust us if we’re just going to push him away later, she had said. Tony had to admit, with the way Loki looked at her like she was too breakable to touch or might vanish at any moment, he could sort of understand Pepper’s concern. He sympathized with Loki’s concern too, since Tony was pretty sharply aware right now of what it felt like to almost lose Pepper Potts.

“Pretty sure,” Tony said with finality, then added, “Just as long as he understands that it’s a package deal.” He addressed Loki. “You get both of us or neither.”

Loki took a moment to absorb that, and then slowly he grinned, uncertainty forgotten as he sent Tony a winningly unsound smile, full of all the challenge that look had held the other day when Tony threatened to take Loki’s magic away. That grin was, I dare you to take me on, but now there was affection and gratitude mixed in and the dare was no less terrifying for it. “Perfect.”

The resident madman grinned back in kind. “I think we all understand each other.”

Pepper frowned. “What about Fury?”

Tony gave her a wide-eyed look of mock horror that had Pepper rolling her eyes.

She glanced questioningly at Loki, silently reiterating her question, and found the god treating her to a slight, boastful smirk. “I’ve already dealt with Fury,” he assured her smoothly.

Pepper rested her hands up on Loki’s shoulders and lifted one corner of her mouth in wry suspicion. “I’ve been with Tony too long for evasively literal to work on me anymore,” she informed him. “You have a plan for how you will handle him.” Lightly, she added, “And you’re not sure if it’ll work.”

Loki smiled down at her and briefly closed his eyes in acknowledgment that she had caught the lie in his half-truth. He opened his eyes and the smile remained, warmer than he could possibly have intended. Pepper became aware of the shape of his shoulders under her fingers through the thin material of his shirt. Always separated by walls or hesitation, this was the first time she had actually touched the man, and part of her thrilled at even finding him solid and real. He seemed like the type far too likely to disappear in a puff of smoke, much as he seemed to fear that she would.

But much of his caution had faded, and she admired the way he looked down at her now, with something genuinely boyish in the hopeful curve of his lips, so much younger in this moment than he’d ever looked before. Tensing her arms and shifting a little of her weight up to her hands, Pepper stood on tiptoe to kiss that smile.

Loki kissed her back, bringing up his fingertips to touch her face lightly as he had not quite let himself do the other day. He was brumal fire, precise and quick, worshipful and maddening.

To him, Pepper was heat in winter, warm breath and soft lips leading him through a winding, exploring kiss that brought Loki’s blood to a gently scalding boil. Losing his hesitation, he gripped her jaw and angled it up to deepen the kiss. She made a noise and fisted her hands in his shirt, gripping the material hard. Her hands relaxed and flattened against his torso, sliding up to create a gentle friction with the cloth that still lay between her and his skin. Loki shuddered at the feeling and his eyes tightened further shut, as if pleasure and gentleness were his own idea of pain.

An addictive pain, and Loki reached down to the small of her back to pull her full against him as he continued delving into her mouth and his hands wandered down to her hips. Pepper reached up and ran her hands through his hair, making mess of order and eliciting a hum of contentment from Loki of all people.

Tony watched, enjoying the view, but twisting his lip to one side in annoyance as he felt jealousy creeping in. He stepped forward and tapped hard Loki on the shoulder with his fingertips. “Mind if I cut in? Not actually a question. I’m cutting in.”

The two reluctantly pulled apart. Pepper’s hands slid off Loki’s head and down his chest, pushing lightly to counteract a powerful attraction. You could measure that in teslas, Tony thought a little sourly as the two shifted just enough to angle their bodies toward him. Unhappy with the interruption, Loki glared at Tony, dark hair still tousled from Pepper’s fingers, eyes all cold and gleaming edges; ice that was all the sharper for being half-melted. Tony felt a pleasant shudder slice down his spine at the sight of it, and surprised Loki by kissing him rather than Pepper.

Really, Loki had no right to be surprised. Tony had told him this was the plan.

Tony was hunger and friction and provocation, and Loki forgot his surprise and fought back in all the most wonderful ways. He pressed hard against the other man’s tongue in his mouth until Tony gave ground, and he gripped the smooth brown material of Tony’s shirt to hold him in place and kept pressing, demanding more submission and more sensory data. Coconut and sucrose and traces of metal and chocolate, deep and bitter, combined in a lovely half-rusty taste. Chasing that flavor, Loki bit hard at Tony’s lip, drawing blood and a muffled yelp from Tony, which turned into an approving moan as endorphins rushed to answer pain and Loki licked at the blood there, comparing and contrasting and finding it saltier and sharper than the rest of Tony’s mouth, but similarly metallic.

Tony still held the cookie in one hand, but his other hand was working on the buttons of Loki’s shirt, getting the hang of the task after only a few clumsy tries. At the same time Pepper came up behind Loki, the heat of her body settling against his back as she wrapped her arms around his waist and set to work unbuttoning his pants. With them all pressed so close, the brush of her knuckles as she worked inevitably startled a few wordless groans from Tony where Loki was keeping his mouth too much occupied for anything else. Funny how quickly Loki’s strategies were derailed every time he set foot in this place. He should be working to dethrone this man, there was a mission to complete, but the whole world of plans and ordered thought was unraveling fast, thrown to the wayside in favor of more interesting things like the motions of Tony’s tongue against his.

The shorter man pulled back to breathe, and Loki automatically moved with the motion before he recalled himself and disengaged his mouth from Tony’s with a muttered swear. He repeated the curse louder when Pepper’s hand slid down and wrapped around his cock. Tony’s hand dragged over Loki’s bare chest while Pepper stroked him, the two somehow in perfect synchrony with each other.

The dastardly cooperation continued as Tony slid Loki’s unbuttoned shirt down his back, trapping his elbows to his sides and exposing his shoulderblades for perusal by Pepper’s clever mouth, while Tony recovered enough breath to start working his mouth down Loki’s neck. Tony’s free hand was exploring the joints and hollows of Loki’s right shoulder, then the sensitive lower border of his ribcage, then down his side, coming to grip hard at Loki’s hip bone in a subtle gesture of dominance, pointed and grounding and wrecking. One of Pepper’s hands was still stroking glorious, shuddering friction into his cock while the other traced a maddening line slowly up and down the center of his lower abdomen, grazing his belly button each time, and now Tony’s tongue was finding the hollows of his other shoulder, all rasping heat against his skin and steadily refining precision.

Loki tilted his head up and closed his eyes, overwhelmed by hands and mouths and tugging and dragging, warmth and pressure building, losing himself to a pleasant haze that played counterpoint to sharpening need. “I think your plan may be working,” he managed, breath coming difficult and jagged.

“You hear that Pepper? I think he likes us.” Tony punctuated that statement by biting lightly at Loki’s nipple, earning a low, rough cry that did seem to prove his point.

It was too much. Pepper’s grip on him was wonderfully firm, punctuated by the occasional stroke of far, far too gentle, setting his nerves on edge and forcing him to make the most undignified whimper-like sounds in the back of his throat. Tony was still holding Loki’s nipple between his teeth, licking and sucking and pulling Loki closer, stretching the sensations too far until they threatened to snap. Loki forced himself to string together a whispered complaint through the storm. “Ahh. If you don’t stop that I’m not going to -” Pepper’s hand moved faster, Tony bit down harder, and Loki saw white.

When Loki came back to himself, his forehead was resting on Tony’s shoulder and his body was gasping for breath, and each inhalation sent a wave of pleasant sparks through his chest and out to his limbs. Tony and Pepper were leaning close against him, holding him upright, and his mind was only just reawakening to catalog the distinctions and boundaries that existed between him and to two mortals trapping him between them. His mind concluded that there was too much clothing.

A voice drifted through his awareness. Tony’s, muffled by the act of chewing. “Loki and chocolate chip. This is going to ruin all other cookies for me, I swear.”

“Lemme try that.” Pepper.

Loki was caught somewhere between luxuriating in the pleasant vibration of their every word thrumming through their chests and his, and arriving at the sharp realization of exactly which two food groups Tony had thought to combine. Pepper made a noise of gustatory appreciation and Loki, hearing it, groaned into Tony’s shoulder.

“So, God, right?” This was Tony. “How long d'you think before he’s up for more?”

It seemed rather perfectly fated, Loki thought, that his half-removed shirt trapped his arms so he could still -- only just -- reach the clasp of Tony’s pants. He worked at the button with one hand while the other prodded Tony through the fabric and started stroking in a way that made Tony close his eyes and breathe, “Ohshityes.”

The last of the cookie hit the floor. Pepper chuckled at Tony, but Loki just raised his head to carefully examine the man’s reactions, watching the small muscles in his face twitch with the motions of Loki’s hands, weighing and setting plans.

Pepper’s hand settled on Loki’s hips, a pleasant, distracting pressure, and if she did anything else he would lose track of all his focus again and possibly his plans with it. Loki decided to change the game. He neatly and abruptly slid out from between the two, finally removing himself from the center of their devastatingly thorough attentions. Tony’s hands shot out to Pepper’s shoulders to keep himself upright, suddenly missing the weight of Loki’s body and the dizzying motions of his hands. “Jeez. Tease, much?”

Coming to a standstill a few feet away, Loki could clearly see both of the mortals who had so gratifyingly corrupted him and won him over, carefully taking in their their current state while he planned vengeance in kind.

Tony looked back at Loki hungrily while he found his feet and dropped a hand from one of Pepper’s shoulders. His shirt was creased and crumpled from the grip of Loki’s hands and his lower lip was damaged where Loki had bitten it, a tiny maroon line set in swollen scarlet.

Pepper’s clothing and hair were still comparatively unmussed. She was only flushed and curious, watching Loki with pleasure-darkened eyes to see if he was planning to flee any farther.

Loki made no moves to do so. Having regained what she considered an unfair amount of composure, he reached back to disentangle his forearms from his shirt and drop the garment to the floor, at the same time stepping out of his shoes and socks. Then he looked up, back and forth between the two of them, expression passive, his eyes contemplative as they settled on Pepper. “You next, I think,” Loki decided, and Pepper felt a sweep of intoxicating unease, not unlike an ill-advised look downward from a deadly height.

Loki placed one foot behind another, stepping back invitingly toward the bedroom, arms out in a half-beckon, now clad only in unfastened pants that slipped tantalizingly lower with each step.

Tony put a hand to the small of Pepper’s back and pushed. “Welp, you heard the man. Ladies first. Let’s not keep him waiting.”

“In a hurry, Tony?” she asked as she permitted him to propel her forward.

“If you’re not, then I assume you’ve gone blind.”

A few more steps and they were in the bedroom. Loki took Pepper’s hand as he would a queen’s and helped her onto the bed with elegant, gentlemanly superfluousness.

Tony went to climb in after, but, “You are not coming to bed dressed like that,” Pepper informed him, looking Tony up and down with clear disapproval at his being by far the most dressed of the three, shirt still buttoned, trousers and shoes still on.

Tony pouted like a wounded puppy and considered arguing for a split-second before he realized that the problem had a simple solution, and started working his way free of garments and shoes and socks.

Loki crawled over Pepper, contemplating her attire. She was still wearing the shirt and denim shorts she had arrived in, but they were minimal and left Loki free to trace his hands slowly up the lines of her calves and thighs, earning an uneven breath and a look full of pleased apprehension. And it meant Loki could undress her. Loki liked that, the peeling away of layers, the discovery of things hidden, letting her feel the difference between his hands caressing over the fabric and under it. Making Pepper fall apart was likely the most exquisite prospect ever set before Loki.

His instincts clamored with distrust when presented with something he desired so much, and part of him was tempted to ask, Can I? Really? like a child suddenly and strangely allowed to play with the best toy. But she had agreed not to walk away, and here she was under him all flushed skin and willing mouth pressing up into his. Hesitating would not serve him here.

So Loki set about making her squirm, making her perception narrow to the feel of his mouth and hands. For the moment Tony cooperated in the task, arriving a minute into the proceeding and positioning himself to whisper filth in her ear with all the familiar accuracy of a long-standing lover, making Pepper voice brief, whimpering moans of startled approval.

Her shirt was first to go, with all due ceremony and teasing from Loki, followed by shorts and panties. Loki kissed her foot as he cast them aside, then he moved to the inside of her ankle, licking a circle around the medial point of her tibia. Pepper hummed in bliss, but the sound took on a rougher edge of impatience as Loki continued unhurriedly to the front of her ankle. She hooked her other foot under his shoulder and tugged, directing him closer.

Loki bit lightly at the tendons under his mouth and Pepper’s body jerked briefly -- all pleasure -- before he followed her lead and allowed himself to be pulled up far enough to face her and kiss her mouth again. She was divine, kissing him back hungrily, and Loki shuddered, his body wanting to be buried in her nearly as much as his mind wanted to draw this out. He focused his hands on the bra she was still wearing, a construction of beige-copper colored lace just a shade lighter than her hair. He traced the edges, ran his fingers over her breasts through the fabric, and that made her gasp, made her bare hips grind up into his, dragging his breath away.

Tony’s hands started wandering Loki’s ribs again, distracting him with calloused fingers and rough nails digging into all the sensitive points Tony had found earlier, drawing a ragged noise from Loki and making it near impossible to focus on the task at hand. And whatever Tony was whispering in Pepper’s ear now, Loki could guess the topic had changed by the way Pepper’s eyes lit up and shifted to take in Loki’s reactions, glittering with fascination and too much clarity.

Aggravated, Loki pushed Tony down hard by the shoulder and shifted over to get another taste of that mouth, biting lightly over the barely-closed cut on Tony’s lip, a reminder and a warning. Then he pushed deeper, following traces of heat and metal and impossibility until they burned around him. Tony’s hands were fisting in his hair to hold him in place with a kind of desperation and Tony groaned approval into Loki’s mouth, and Loki would have liked very much to smile in his victory at that, because having Tony Stark under his power like this was intoxicating and exactly right.

As it was, Loki couldn’t do much but groan back.

But he remembered his earlier plans and pulled back roughly, rolling Tony forcefully onto his side toward Pepper again, a clear unspoken command of, focus.

Tony focused.

Pepper was still wearing that bra, and starting to make motions toward squirming out of it herself. Loki pulled her up, wrapping his hands behind her mid back and lifting so that Tony had room to reach under and tug at the metal clasps there. Then Loki was slowly dragging one strap down her arm with his mouth following close behind, kissing as biting and pausing to do devious things to the sensitive inner surface of her elbow.

Tony made quicker work of the task on his side and immediately moved on to her breasts, taking one in hand and wrapping his mouth over the other, enjoying the alternation of hard nipple and melting-soft areola under his tongue. The attention made Pepper’s toes curl and legs flex in a yearning motion. “Tony….”

Tony stopped to free up his mouth and look up at her. “What do you want, Pep? Tell me.”

Too far gone to filter her words, she just groaned, “I want Loki to fuck me.”

Tony felt a lancing electricity through his body that couldn’t decide if it was pure jealousy or pure arousal, hot as anger and at the same time just plain hot, and damn if this whole thing wasn’t all the right kinds of confusing. He sent Loki a dark look. “You heard her.”

After the quick application of a condom and a little maneuvering, Pepper had one leg hooked over Loki’s shoulder and he was pushing into her, slow and forceful.

Pepper hummed low in the back of her throat at the feeling of Loki filling her and Tony once again settling next to her, engaging her mouth in a thorough kiss and allowing his hands to continue where they had left off. Tony’s mind and hands excelled at any task he set them to, and the strong, calloused fingers dragged over her chest, rough skin against soft, catching at all the right places. His mouth against hers was warm and reverent and played gentle havoc with her thoughts. She reached out to wrap a hand around Tony’s cock, stroking in time with the rhythm Loki was setting, and Tony’s hands lost some of their precision as he groaned and bucked into the touch.

Pepper lost track of time as Loki surged in and out of her, turbulent but slow, just this side of gentle. She was riding high on -- what was that word Loki had used? -- focus. Attentiveness. Worshipful scrutiny. Two men capable of perfecting their craft to the finest detail were making a craft of bringing her to quaking, searing orgasm, to making the earth crumble away under her, leaving Pepper suspended at some plummeting height where all was perfection and there were no handholds. It was all blinding light and impossibly tangled, sharing a kiss full of intimate comprehension with a mad inventor while at the same time having her soul swayed and rattled by the pounding, dizzying and not-quite-erratic rhythm of an archetypal force of chaos who was somehow also a man looking to her with consuming intelligence and desperate love.

Kissing Tony back and wrapping a free leg around Loki’s hips to pull him deeper in, she was engaging both men, present with both, all one and nothing alike. A chord struck of three notes, and it shook with frequencies that melded and defied each other and begged for resolve and begged to go on shaking.

Loki pulled back again, fighting the tug of her heel in his back to seek out a better angle. He found it, and with a sharp jerk of his hips he made Pepper very nearly scream into Tony’s mouth, her hand spasming and forgetting its work. At that, Tony pulled back, halting the kiss in favor of just watching her face and listening as her voice grew louder and rougher with each of Loki’s thrusts.

When the alternation of cries and incomprehensible stream of words took on a hint of agitation and the words, “Too much,” tumbled out amid the wreckage, Loki let a thin cord of control snap, climaxed in a few shuddering motions, and went still.

He braced his hands on the mattress and pulled out, slid Pepper’s leg down from where it was still perched on his shoulder, curled forward and rested his head lightly against the plane of her stomach as they both took a minute to recall the mechanisms of breathing.

Lying next to them, Tony stared wide-eyed, very turned on and still very, very hard. Once the pair’s breathing started to even out, he sat up a little and said, “Uh, feeling kind of left out over here.”

Pepper and Loki turned to look him up and down, glanced at each other, and by unspoken agreement moved at the same time to tackle him and hold him flat to the bed. Pepper rested much of the weight of her upper body on his shoulder while Loki wrapped one strong hand over each of Tony’s thighs just above the knee.

“Okay, Tony,” Pepper agreed tolerantly against his ear. “Your turn.”

Things were changing gears fast and Tony wasn’t sure whether the shiver running down his spine was from the tone in Pepper’s voice or from the sight of Loki’s head lowering toward his groin at a very promising angle, but either way, it was… “Good. Better. Not feeling so le-- Shit. God. Wow,” Tony swore on three sharp exhales.

Loki’s mouth was what Tony imagined heaven would be like if heaven were somewhere dark and hot with unexpected licks and sinful twists and, hey, that sounded kind of like somewhere else, didn’t it?

Time started to blur for Tony as that mouth moved back and forth, heat descending and retreating and washing over him. Loki knew exactly where to trace his lips and tongue ever-so lightly, agile and staggering, where to lick harder along the side with intent and rasping friction, now opening his mouth wide and surrounding Tony with sliding heat, now retreating to trap the head of Tony’s cock under the softer underside of his tongue and rotating so that impossible softness was dragging around him.

Tony was riveted by every motion, pretty sure Loki had rendered him incapable of feeling any stretch of skin not touching that ingenious mouth.

But then Pepper started in on his collarbone and Tony realized that it was more the opposite. The soft touch of her lips jerked his attention outward, once again aware of his whole body, and everything was magnified. The slide of sheets and the tickle of sweat and the slight motions of cool air in the room. Each tactile perception was made more intense and immediate by the state Loki had lured him into, raw and sensitized. Pepper kissed up his neck, warm and soft -- or cold and sharp? -- and moving out of rhythm with Loki’s mouth, and there was so much sensory input, and none of it could be quantified or sorted away or ignored.

Loki pulled back far enough to create suction, tongue shifting back with a slow, undulating pull, and Tony teetered on the edge, almost came but didn’t quite. “Oh fuck, Loki, that’s good. Don’t ever --”

The trickster chose that moment to stop, lifting his shoulders, neck and head in one rolling motion as he removed his mouth from its work with a soft, wet noise.

Tony made a frustrated sound, an odd amalgamation of growl and whimper.

The god smiled up at him with flushed lips and no hint of remorse, a little breathless after having his mouth so occupied. “Now, about that matter of whether or not you really rule the Earth...”

Who could care about something like that at a time like this? Fisting his hands hard in the sheets under him, Tony demanded, “You want to negotiate global politics now?” Seriously, Loki needed to go back what he’d been doing. Needed to. Tony looked to Pepper for rescue, but she had stopped too while he was distracted. The woman was sitting back on her ankles watching avidly with a renewed flush running up her neck and cheeks, clearly all too approving of Loki’s torture tactics.

Loki traced the fingers of one hand over the hyperaware skin of Tony’s thigh as if in absent thought, a few points of light, tickling warmth that might as well have been firebrands. Tony was pretty sure the guy was doing it just to be cruel. Tony was pretty sure that something important like mathematical absolutes would start breaking down if Loki didn’t do something to push him over that edge he’d been balanced on just a few desperate seconds ago.

“The terms of my mission were that I remove you from the seat of power such that someone more suitable would take your place. So, name Pepper ruler of all mankind.” Loki looked over at Pepper and his smile softened but didn’t quite shed its merciless edge. “She meets the criteria beautifully.”

“Pepper, I’m promoting you again,” Tony gasped out immediately. And then, “Fuck, please, yes…” as Loki’s mouth returned to gracing his cock with slide and motion and sparks of pleasure. Tony let his head fall back and made a noise as Pepper returned to his collarbone and ran her hands up his chest and neck to thread her fingers into his hair. Everything was back to pleasant, rolling heat and a lovely, dark, twisting, building pressure.

It occurred to Tony that from the moment Loki had stepped away and decided that Pepper would be the next to come, the god had been playing Tony, setting him up to be wound up and desperate, and planning to hold that over him. But it was kind of perfect because who was Tony to rule the world? Why would he even want to? But having Pepper do it, that was…

It occurred to Tony that Loki was perfect. This was around the moment he was coming down Loki’s throat, hands still fisted tightly in the sheets while Pepper licked electricity into the spot behind his ear and ran her fingers through his hair. So there might have been some lost objectivity there.

A good deal later, when they all lay on the bed in a tangled, exhausted heap, basking in the afterglow, Loki spoke up. “I have a confession to make.”

“Oh?” Tony prompted.

“When I said that you only had one problem left...”

“...Yes?” Pepper prompted.

“...I was lying,” Loki admitted. “On a related note, I understand your nanites are programmed to overlook shields, recurve bows, low-grade explosives, and lump hammers.”

Tony heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Avengers?”

“I’m afraid so.”

A few days later, they had a visitor.

“Phil!” Pepper greeted with enthusiasm, taking his hand. “It’s been so long. How are you? I heard you got hurt.”

“Oh, I’m well enough,” Coulson assured her. “Glad to be working again.”

“She calls him ‘Phil’?” Loki whispered to Tony, narrowing his eyes at Agent Coulson.

Tony whispered back, “Yeah, I did not know that. Think we should kill him?” At Loki’s unimpressed look, he amended, “Only a little! Like, not killing him killing him, just… Phil!” he interrupted himself at a more audible volume as Coulson approached. “Hi. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to my home. Have a seat, have a drink...”

“Good to see you again Mr. Stark, Mr. Odinson.” Coulson shook their hands in turn. “I’m actually here on business. Perhaps we could all sit?”

They settled into the couches surrounding the coffee table, and Pepper gave Coulson a slightly wary look. “What’s this about?”

Coulson rested his forearms on his knees and clasped his hands, speaking carefully. “There have been a few changes over at SHIELD. The organization has been… reevaluating its goals, and how best to achieve those goals. We’ve made alterations to the staff profile, shut down outdated projects, and Fury has asked me to come here and offer you a partnership.”

“We’re not marrying you,” Tony informed him.

Coulson continued, unfazed. “Before the TIDY incident, SHIELD worked in collaboration with several governments, most notably the US and its allies. Miss Potts, it’s become apparent that you now represent a large portion of the existing world government. I’m here to assure you that SHIELD intends to treat you as such, and that our resources will be available to you from here on out.”

Pepper smiled magnanimously. “Thank you. Tell Director Fury we really appreciate his support.”

Loki looked less relieved. “We’d like to hear more about the alterations you’ve made to your ‘staff profile.’”

Coulson sighed and set aside a layer of his formal persona. “That’s the other reason I’m here: to warn you. Not everyone was happy with Fury’s decision.” Coulson opened his briefcase and pulled out a stack of four folders.

Loki rubbed his eyebrows with a finger and thumb. “Let me guess. Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton, Steve Rogers, and my idiot brother.”

“Avengers,” Tony summarized.

Coulson slid the files over to them. “Good guess. They’ve left SHIELD and joined a rebel cell dedicated to overthrowing you.”

“Where are they now?” Pepper asked.

“We lost track of them this morning just north of Fort Lee, so, most likely still in New York. We’re looking into claims that a percentage of today’s tourist influx has ties to the resistance. That’s all we have for you so far.”

Coulson stood to leave. Pepper and Loki politely stood too, and Tony followed suit a second later.

“We’ll be setting up SHIELD agents around this building’s perimeter. I’ll be in touch.”

Tony put an arm around Coulson’s shoulders and walked him to the elevator. “We appreciate the heads-up, but we can take care of it. We’ve got an evil-genius god on our side who makes SHIELD look about as scary as a pile of tribbles. And we’ve got Loki and Pepper. The Avengers will be dust before you can bat an eye. So you can all kick back and go back to whatever you normally do. Put black bags over people’s heads. Write scathing personality profiles. Relax.”

When they stopped at the elevator, Coulson turned and faced Tony squarely. “Mr. Stark, I want you to know that despite recent events, my personal feelings have not changed. I still believe that you would have been an asset to the Avengers Initiative.” He smiled in a way that was perfectly polite and mildly chilling. “And I believe that if you kill any of the agents who’ve worked under my protection for the past several years, the biggest piece of you anyone ever finds will be the paperclip on your death certificate. Goodbye.”

Coulson stepped into the elevator and smiled serenely at Tony while the doors closed.

Tony walked back to Loki and Pepper and blew out a bemused breath. “What does it say about me that I’m not scared of gods or government, but I find that guy kind of terrifying?”

Loki replied, “It says you’re not so stupid as you appear.”

Tony looked at him flatly. “Thanks. I’ll - ”

A high, deafening sound splintered the air, followed by the chinks of scattering glass as a hammer crashed in through the window and hurtled across the room and on through the opposite wall.

Once outside, the weapon magically reversed course and flew past them again, this time throwing drywall dust across the floor and returning to the hand of an angry god of thunder, who was just finding his feet on the landing pad outside.

“Seriously?” Tony demanded of the world at large. “I just redecorated in here.”

“Loki!” Thor shouted, pacing forward. Tony was pretty sure the guy was intentionally walking slowly to amp up the avenging angel look. “Your oaths to Fury are fulfilled! Now, you will return with me to Asgard!”

Pepper narrowed her eyes dangerously at Thor as he entered through the window his hammer had shattered. “He will not,” she corrected Thor with cold finality.

“And who are you?”

Loki cleared his throat. “Brother, allow me to introduce the Lady Pepper Potts. Queen of Earth. My queen, this is Thor Odinson, crown prince of Asgard.”

Pepper inclined her head slightly, every inch a ruler acknowledging a fellow royal.

“Earth has no throne,” Thor said flatly.

Tony scrunched up his nose. “Actually it’s had a bunch and has all along, they’re just not-”

“It does now,” Loki informed Thor.

Thor glanced briefly at Pepper, then back at Loki. “As I heard it, this throne was taken by force before it was bestowed on her.”

“Is there any other kind of throne?” Loki demanded, miffed by his brother’s ignorance.

“Loki, the people of Earth were not meant to be ruled. They look on this as an invasion, and they rebel.”

“Oh, sure, some of them do,” Tony cut in. “But have you looked at the statistics? Seven billion people, and the resistance only makes up a few hundred fighters. Polls indicate only about ten million people even support the resistance; that’s a fraction of a percent. We put the old approval ratings to shame! Jarvis, show him.” The air filled with charts and excerpts of surveys illustrating his point.

Thor waved them aside. “I don’t know what your mechanical servants have told you in order to please you, but the people I’ve spoken to are unhappy with your rule.”

Tony sighed. “You’ve been talking to Natasha.”

“And others. Whether you’ve the right to rule this world or no, you cannot keep my brother from me. He is guilty of many crimes, and must face Asgardian justice.”

Pepper spoke again, softly but firmly. “I’ve granted Loki asylum. You can’t have him. Tony, armor.”

Tony nodded. “Jarvis?”

“On its way, sir.”

Thor, his instincts and honor demanding that he not strike the first blow until his opponent was armed, gripped Mjolnir menacingly and waited.

His allies had no such qualms, so it fell to Loki to catch an arrow out of the air just short of Pepper’s head. Tony registered the whhish of the arrow’s flight a split second later, saw it in Loki’s hand and said, “Throw that out the window. Now!”

Loki obeyed swiftly, and the arrow exploded mid-flight out on the landing pad. Tony watched the explosion, weaker than it would have been before the nanites but still enough to injure a human up close. The two assassins who had set their lot against the new rulers must be perched atop some nearby building. He felt a cold rage set in, and the suit arrived and wrapped around him in time to hide a really terrifying smile, made wider by the feeling of metal and lethal power encasing his body. Tony was going to enjoy hurting the hand that had loosed that arrow.

Thor faced Tony, considering his pose and his armor and deciding how best to attack. His preoccupation made it easy for an invisible Loki to step behind him, take hold of his armor and throw him bodily out the window, using a quickly gestured spell to make the landing pad outside frictionless and send his brother skidding over the edge.

Loki turned back to the others, running a hand through his hair to straighten it. “That won’t keep him down for long. Thor can take a hard fall. And he can fly.”

“Noticed that,” Iron Man replied. “Okay, I’m taking the fight outside. Loki, you stay here and protect Pepper.”

Loki nodded.

Pepper did not. “You can’t take on four Avengers single-handed!”

“Watch me!” Tony threw back with dark glee. Then his grin faded behind the mask as he realized he’d started an argument he couldn’t win, and Pepper might order Loki away. “No, wait, listen. Loki’s more of a long-range fighter anyway, right?”

“I think he’s more dangerous up close,” Pepper countered dryly, but she relented. “You’re right. Loki can use magic from up here. Go.”

Tony went. Jarvis analyzed the trajectory of the arrow meant for Pepper, tracing it back to a skyscraper a few blocks over. Tony flew straight to it, the display on his HUD showing a scan of the building and zeroing in on two assassins making their way down a flight of stairs inside the top floor.

Tony crashed on through a window and a wall and headed them off at the bottom of the stairwell. The two acrobatically dodged his blows, leading him back out into the more open space of the conference room he had just barreled through.

Tony finally got in a good hit, shoving both opponents out the window, then flew out again intending to catch them before they hit the ground. Hawkeye shot a grappling hook up to snag on the floor he had just fallen from, catching Black Widow just in time before he slowed and stopped, leaving them both hanging from a two hundred foot cord against a flat wall of the Chrysler Building.

Tony left them to work their way out of that predicament while he went for a closer look at the scene below.

There was a ragtag militia down on the street outside his tower, some of them actually carrying the classic clubs and pitchforks for lack of a better alternative.

Captain America seemed to be giving orders. Tony decided to land and see if he could talk some sense into the soldier. Easing up on the thrust to come down neatly in the largest patch of clear street he could find, he lifted his face plate and called, “Hey! Spangles!”

...Thus attracting the attention of a rebellious mob as well as the unimpressed superhero leading them. Yeah, this was already going well.

“Stark,” Rogers called, walking toward him, and man, did Tony’s enemies ever have the avenging angel walk down pat today. The crowd stood back for their Captain.

“Hi,” said Tony. “You seem to have something against my front door. Specifically -- wow, you actually brought a battering ram? You guys really went all-out. I hate to break it to you when everyone’s already shown up for the party, but I never agreed to host this shindig. Which brings me to the question of WHAT,” he raised his voice, flippancy giving way to real rage, “EXACTLY. You’re doing AT MY HOUSE!”

“I don’t take kindly to people who think they own the world.”

“Oh, didn’t you get the memo? I don’t own the world anymore. I gave it to my girlfriend in exchange for sex.” Tony scratched his chin thoughtfully with a gauntleted finger. “Sex with someone else, ironically enough. That was a good night.”

Rogers stared at him, slack-jawed with uncomprehending disgust.

“The point being, I don’t think I own the world. Pepper does, and she’s actually pretty good at it, so there really shouldn’t be any problem. You’re making something of nothing. But hey, that’s okay, we all make mistakes. You guys can all just go home; we’ll forget the whole thing ever happened.”

“I have a better idea,” said Rogers.

“You were going to follow that up with a witty but violent one-liner, weren’t you?” Tony sighed and closed his face plate. “Okay.” He raised his hands and charged the repulsors.

There was quick exchange of projectiles and a few narrow dodges until Tony hit his mark -- the soldier’s star-spangled head -- and Rogers fell flat on his back, unconscious. The crowd rushed to Steve, and there was a shout of, “He’s breathing!” They looked on Tony with disgust, but also fear, not daring to attack him with his suit on. It was awkward.

And it felt sort of anticlimactic, Tony thought, right before Thor’s hammer hit the back of his own head and his vision briefly went black as the force threw him flying at a sickening angle.

Watching the battle from various video feeds in the penthouse, Loki grimaced as Iron Man hit pavement and Pepper sucked in a sharp breath. Fortunately, it didn’t take long for Tony to push himself back to his feet.

Thor ran forward, aiming another blow, and Loki managed to use the frictionless surface trick again to send Thor skidding into the path of his own hammer, taking a hard knock to the left shoulder. It would only work once, but it would convince Thor not to send his hammer flying again for the rest of the fight.

Loki had been busy creating illusions to cover stairways and doors in the Chrysler building to subtly block the exits for the two assassins, but now he left them to scurry around in their maze and turned his full attention on Tony and Thor, creating fake Iron Men to distract and confuse his brother.

It was tragically similar to using the Hulk against the Chitauri, watching Thor charge at the illusions Loki created only to have them vanish at the last possible second. Tony played along beautifully, allowing his doubles to take turns playing the role of smart-talking leader of the pack while he looked for openings and attacked from unexpected angles.

Behind Loki, the elevator opened and Coulson appeared again.

Pepper turned. “Phil, what are you doing here?”

“Fury sent me to act as your bodyguard,” Coulson replied, “...should you need a replacement.”

Loki clenched his teeth. “Which is Director Fury’s way of saying he thinks the battle is going poorly.” He cursed his own power of insight, because he could tell the director was right.

Iron Man held the upper hand now, but it was temporary. He was too much outnumbered, and Thor’s strength would outlast all the obstacles Loki could place in his path. The suit, on the other hand, was breakable. The wear of the battle would steadily decrease its function, and the mortal inside it would tire. “We can’t win while Thor still fights,” Loki concluded aloud.

And, in a strange way, that was perfect. The way for Loki to ensure a win, the way to keep Tony safe… Thor’s death was the only viable outcome. With the right magics -- ugly but necessary magics -- Loki need not even leave his queen to do it. There was something both vindictive and searingly clean in the notion. To end permanently all the former loyalty and love that had so sullied and weakened him, that he had needed so fiercely. It was delicious revenge. It was the ultimate immolation. It was unquestionably called for.

Loki turned to the woman he loved, and made his offer. “Pepper, he was once my brother. Ask it of me, and I’ll kill him for you.”

Pepper went still for several seconds. Then she looked hard into his face, frowning as she discerned just how sincere the offer was, and shook her head. “No.”

“No?” Loki gaped, appalled, his bloodlust denied him, his sacrifice dismissed. He went on in tones of disgust. “He attacks your home and makes war on your people unprovoked! Surely - ”

“I’m sure you can find a better way.” She held his gaze with steady certainty.

There was a silence, and it turned into a dangerous silence. He looked down at her and there was a momentary shift, a scornful twitch at the corner of his mouth and a slight narrowing of his eyes, a withdrawal. The decision to distrust.

Loki spoke again, all too soft. “Did I make a mistake? I thought you a worthy ruler, kind and also ruthless enough to protect your people. I should have known better. I should have known that when the only choice was bloodshed, you would shy away, ceding to the might and idiocy of Asgard’s throne.”

Pepper’s throat tightened visibly as she took a breath, shaken by Loki’s words but also fearsome with stubborn zeal. “I am protecting my people! Yes, Thor is threatening my world, and all of us. And I killed Obadiah Stane for less, so don’t you dare doubt me. But this, here - Earth will not go to war with Asgard while I can prevent it.”

She paused to take in Loki’s face, still stony and closed off, not giving an inch of ground.

More softly Pepper continued, “Now, no one knows Thor like you do. You know his doubts, you know his assumptions, his weaknesses, what he’s proud of… and you’re the most manipulative person alive in this universe. You are perfectly capable of convincing him to leave under his own will, and that’s what you’re going to do.”

Loki blinked. He frowned slightly as his bitterness gave way in the face of undeniable logic and the intriguing puzzle of persuading Thor to surrender. He’d failed at the task in the past, certainly. But Loki had grown since. Become less naive. And Thor had learned the weight of guilt. Maybe…

However.

“That would require me to leave your side.”

Pepper’s nostrils flared at Loki’s continued defiance. Before she could speak, Phil Coulson stepped forward. “She’ll be safe with me.”

She smiled gratefully at Coulson and raised her eyebrows at Loki in a look of, Well, there you go.

Loki narrowed his eyes at Coulson, unconvinced.

“You know he’s not lying,” Pepper chided Loki.

“That doesn’t make him correct.”

Shaking her head at his obstinacy, Pepper stepped toward Loki and pulled his head down for a kiss. Her mouth against his was startling as always, ever a painful, melting reminder of how cold his world was when set sharp against her warmth. When it ended she kept her hand at the nape of his neck and looked up into his eyes, her expression kind and ruthless. “Loki,” she said quietly, “Do as I say.”

And Loki, for the life of him, could not conjure a refusal to his tongue before Pepper and Coulson had walked together into the elevator and disappeared to some floor of the tower less conspicuous and more safe.

Loki swore, magicked himself once again onto the form of a pigeon, and flew off to search for Thor.

Tony learned how quickly Captain America could recover from a head injury around the same time the two black-clad assassins finally emerged from a long detour through some sky-scraping 20th century architecture. And Thor wasn’t even winded.

“Great. Back where we started. Any ideas, Jarvis?” Tony asked hopefully as the four Avengers circled him.

Jarvis said, “Running away is always an option.”

“Any not wimpy ideas?”

Loki or some double of him appeared and attacked Thor, luring him off to the side and out of the equation, and leaving Tony with a much more workable fight. He hovered about twenty feet off the street, the captain on the ground below, and the assassins just starting to climb the walls of the buildings on either side of him.

“I still recommend running, sir,” Jarvis advised again as another explosive arrow hit his wrist and overheated the delicate workings of his left repulsor, throwing him off balance.

Loki stood with his back to a wall, and an angry god of thunder stood before him, fist gripping at the neck of his armor.

Around them, giving the gods a wide birth, a mess of hand-to-hand combat raged between SHIELD agents and rebel fighters. That round was definitely going to the agents, who were making short work of disabling their opponents, arresting them, and making them disappear into black vans and unmarked cars that cycled continually through the proceedings.

“Look at this!” Thor shouted at Loki, “Look around you! You think this will end with your rule?”

Loki hadn’t stopped speaking for Thor’s words, and continued under him, “ -- it’s too late. There was a time you might have prevented this, but that time has passed.”

“You need not rule this world!”

“You need not stop me!” Loki put a hand on Thor’s forearm.

Thor lifted his hammer with a growl. But he paused, arm half raised, eyes narrowing in confusion when he realized his brother’s gesture was more conciliatory than violent.

The arm holding Loki at bay slackened, and the trickster took his chance to step closer and hiss advice sharper and more precisely aimed than his daggers. “Thor, remember all the times you heeded my words and I led you away from folly, and listen now. Please, stop, and think. You say it’s not too late, but the war you’re fighting ended before it began. What are you doing here, but creating senseless violence? Look around, yourself. The humans no longer slaughter each other in droves. There is peace, but for the war you bring. You come here as you once came to Jotunheim, to challenge a ruler rashly, with too few warriors and too little reason. Recall your humility, brother. I can’t stop this madness, but you can.”

Thor glanced downward, shame and troubled doubt making their way in as he considered Loki’s words. “I don’t know,” he confessed.

“Then learn. Put down your weapon and ask your questions. Wait to make war until you know your purpose in fighting.”

Thor half lowered his hammer, but gripped it harder. “I have a duty to bring you home to Asgard.”

“Consider the consequences of that. Is it worth it, Thor? Bring me back to Asgard and then… what? Celebrate my homecoming? Imprison me? Only to anger those who now rule Midgard, only to see the realm you so love turn against you? What are you trying to achieve?”

It took a full minute of thought, but at last Thor’s shoulders sagged and he dropped Mjolnir to the ground and let go his hold on Loki’s armor. “I have questions,” he said resolutely.

“And I have a lover to protect.” Loki indicated Tony, who stood taking on Captain America and two very skilled assassins, and losing ground. “Perhaps… another time?” Loki grinned smugly and stepped to the side, changing forms once again and flying off toward the battle before Thor could answer.

Thor gritted his teeth in anger, but could think of no good reason to continue this war he had unwisely joined. He took up his hammer and started spinning it.

“Is that beloved brother of yours going out for reinforcements?” Tony asked as Loki landed on the street beside him and became himself again and Thor disappeared into the northeast sky.

“No, he’s been dealt with,” Loki replied. “I convinced him it was better to leave.”

Tony dodged a shield aimed for his neck. “Took you what, two minutes? Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

“I think there, you overestimate my persuasive abilities.” Loki created five illusory shields that bounced off the wall behind them at varying angles, leaving Rogers to try to catch one at random, missing the real one.

“Well, you got the god out of the way. Now we’ve just got two elite assassins and a super-soldier. That should be - Where’s Pepper?!”

“With Coulson. She ordered me away.”

“Then you should have said no! Ow, geez,” Tony added as an arrow exploded along one of the weak points in his armor, burning him.

“I suggest we focus on the task at hand,” Loki advised dryly.

“Yeah, fine. Do you want the scary one or the annoying spangly one?”

Loki’s eyes danced across the options and glittered when they landed on Barton. “What about the one who shot an explosive arrow at our queen?”

“You can’t have that one. I’m going to grind that one into powder.”

Another black, unmarked car pulled up, and Fury stepped out, holding a long fighting staff made of some sort of dark metal. He walked toward Captain America and took an offensive pose. “Time to call it quits, son.”

Rogers didn’t seem to think much of the weapon, but he stopped to address Fury’s words. “Yeah, I think you know an awful lot about quitting.”

Romanov eyed the opposition, not liking how the odds had evened. “Rogers, don’t get distracted,” she called.

Fury went on talking. “We made the decision that was in the best interest of the world. I recommend you do the same.”

Steve took a step forward and gestured at Iron Man. “So, this is the way, the ‘best interest?’ Give up our freedom, our whole democracy? Sounds like the coward’s way out. If you really believed in anything but keeping SHIELD in charge of-”

Steve took another blow to the head from Tony’s right repulsor and fell flat again, and this time a group of SHIELD agents descended on him and carried him away on a stretcher.

Barton dropped to the ground and cleared his throat. “Um. How’s about the one who shot an explosive arrow at your queen agrees to surrender?”

“What?” Tony demanded in shocked disappointment. “Wait. No one heard that right? Like, we can all tell Pepper he never said that.”

“I heard that,” said Pepper’s voice over the comms.

“Damn,” said Tony. “Alright. Fine. Hand over your bow.”

The archer nodded.

“Barton.” Romanov came to stand next to her ally and looked to him for a cue. What’s your play?

Barton shrugged back at her. “We lost.”

Then Natasha realized Clint meant it. She crossed her arms and stepped close to him, quietly incensed. She spoke too low for any but him to hear. “You’re going to turn yourself in? To SHIELD? What happened to caring who we work for? When we met, you’re the one who made a different call and told me to do the same. You’re the one who told me I could try to balance the books. Now, I vouched for Loki and it went bad. That’s in my ledger now. If we let him take over, what are you gonna tell me this time?”

Clint unstrung his bow. “Same thing I told you then, Nat. I don’t aim at what I know I’m gonna miss.” He handed the weapon off and allowed himself to be handcuffed and guided into the back seat of a SHIELD vehicle.

Natasha estimated that she could probably make a break for it with decent odds. It was a choice between surrendering and leaving her partner. After a second of thought, she followed Clint’s example and climbed into the car next to him.

Fury closed the door after them. The car drove away and another arrived. Fury opened the door of this one as well, this time for himself, but he turned back.

Tony had taken off his helmet and was examining the dent Thor’s hammer had left in the occipital plate. “You know, I think he was really trying to kill me,” he concluded, sounding miffed.

“You just noticed that?” Loki questioned dryly.

“Mr. Laufeyson,” Fury called. When Loki turned, he said, “You’re going to keep to the last part of our bargain, I trust.”

“Of course, Director,” Loki replied blandly.

“Good. Mr. Stark,” Fury added with a nod by way of polite acknowledgement, and got into his car.

“What was that about?” Tony asked, uneasy.

Loki looked after the car, expression carefully devoid of emotion. “I have one last promise to fulfill before my business with Fury is settled.”

“There’s another thing? Seriously?”

“I believe Fury’s exact condition was that when our business was concluded I would ‘slink on home.’”

Tony brightened up. “There’s slinking involved? I like this thing. This thing I can get behind. Which, come to think of it, sounds like a great vantage point. Lead the way.” Grinning, Tony gestured toward the tower.

Loki’s eyes followed the gesture. “My home being Stark Tower? You presume a great deal.”

Tony scoffed. “Yeah. Right. Stark Tower.”

Loki gave him a questioning look.

Tony rolled his eyes. “You really don’t live anywhere. I don’t either. We both have the same home, and it’s not New York any more than it’s Asgard or Malibu.”

“No,” Loki agreed. “It’s her.”

“Yeah. Now make with the slink.”

They arrived in the lobby of Stark Tower a few minutes later. Pepper appeared, surrounded by SHIELD agents, which made Tony go tense with unease for a split second before she ran up to him and kissed him fervently with a relieved sort of possessiveness. Tony was grinning when she released him. “So,” he said, “We won.”

“We did,” Loki agreed. “And if it’s all the same to you both, I’ll have that drink now.”

So the three retreated upstairs, shared a toast to world peace, and started in on living happily ever after.

Two weeks had passed.

When a scientist calling himself Bruce Brooks applied for a job in the tower and failed the background check on an epic level, Tony quietly saw to it that no fuss was made and the applicant was hired.

When Jarvis informed Tony that his new employee had been sneaking into the labs late at night to run experiments on the effects of gamma radiation and the reversal thereof, Tony smiled to himself, and told Jarvis to leave the man be.

Tony was having a good day, apart from navigating an awkward call from a genetic engineer he’d once slept with in Switzerland. It was not so much awkward because of the one night stand as because, “Damn it Tony, your nanites ate all my plants!” There followed some grim and mysterious comments from Maya about “not having a boss anymore,” and from there she managed to finagle him into giving her a job at a Stark R&D facility near Miami.

Now he was procrastinating on a few matters of state, instead wandering the top ten floors of the tower and catching up on some of the projects the scientists there were working on. He had some amazing minds at work, curing cancer here and chipping away at light speed travel there, and it really was amazing to watch it all come together.

He saw Bruce catch sight of him, and the scientist hurriedly turned away under the guise of checking a test tube. Maybe he thought Tony would recognize his face after the brief glimpse he had gotten on videochat during the Tesseract incident.

“Doctor Brooks,” Tony called, and Bruce froze.

Tony approached and made no sign of undue recognition when he saw Bruce’s face. He just shook the man’s hand jovially and smiled. “Been meaning to talk to you. I find the research you’ve been doing here just fascinating. Really inspired, if… a little misguided.”

Bruce looked at Tony as if he were hard put not to say, Are you seriously saying that to me?

Tony met the look and said, “Touche.” He pulled out a Stark Pad and rooted around in it for the right document. “Now, I’ve had Jarvis send me my own copy of all your experiments. I’ve been playing around with them, and I had a few ideas that I think you might find interesting.” He handed the tablet to Bruce and waited.

Of course, the experiments Tony had copied were the ones Bruce did at night, with no intention of being observed. The notes and hypotheses on the tablet were all about reversing the effects of gamma exposure. Bruce stood rooted to the spot and stared at the screen. Quite likely the only reason he wasn’t running for the door was that Tony’s ideas were all very, very good ones and he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

“I know you may have other plans, but I’m a big fan of your work. I’d like you to stay on.”

Bruce’s eyes were still glued to the tablet, but he said, “And If I say no?”

“Then you’ve got a big green rage monster and I’ve got a lot of glass windows. I’m not gonna stop you. But there’s no other place in the world where you’ll see the kind of breakthroughs you’re making here.”

Bruce finally looked up at Tony, crossing his arms. “Which you can then use to rule the world with an iron fist.”

“Okay, first off, I keep telling people, I don’t rule the world. Pepper does. Second, it’s not iron! It’s a gold-titanium alloy, making that metaphor completely… only mostly fitting. And things are pretty great, anyway. Have you looked at the world? People walk the streets with touchscreens in their hands and rapiers in their belts and its not a cosplay thing. Do you realize how cool that is?”

“It’s all fun and games until somebody loses an iphone,” Bruce sighed. “I’m serious, though. How do I know you won’t use my findings to create weapons?”

“Okay. Look. I’m somewhat familiar with the experience of having someone else use my tech for more nefarious purposes than I built it for.”

“What, so, I can trust you?” Bruce guessed disbelievingly.

“So I know how oblivious you have to be to let that happen in the first place.” Tony put down the tablet and picked up a pointed tool to fiddle with. “And how careful you’ll be now to make sure I’m not misusing it. Because you’re paranoid now. And that’s great, don’t get me wrong. But are you going to let that get between you and the lives your medical research could save if you stay?”

“Probably, yeah.”

“Okay.” Tony stepped a little closer with a slight air of conspiracy. “Are you going to at least stick around long enough to try some of these ideas for gamma reversal and let me try to convince you to stay longer?”

“Probably. Yeah. Ow!”

Six months had passed.

Pepper was supposed to be on vacation, but she was bent over her tablet, reading over security reports and statistical summaries and doing her best to focus. Loki was holding her secure in his lap, nuzzling at her cheek with an air of intent fascination.

Loki’s default setting with her seemed to be intent fascination, and she basked in the attention. In general it had the added advantage of giving Tony someone to compete with for her attention. It was a long-standing hassle to drag the engineer away from his toys; now the jealous toddler in Tony drove him to always try for the toy Loki was playing with, namely Pepper. Spectacular fights sometimes ensued, but they tended to end well for everyone involved.

Pepper also noticed that Tony’s awareness of anniversaries and taste in gifts had improved to a miraculous degree, and suspected Loki of giving him advice. More so when Tony was ridiculously off the mark; Pepper had opted not to tell him that he had celebrated her birthday twice in four months. Instead, she simply waited to see how many more birthdays she would have this year before Tony caught on.

The world was still coming to terms with the new order of things, but the initial uproar was starting to die down, and the three had retreated to the Malibu house for a month long break from the center of politics -- of course you could never really have a break from politics. There were still social events and meetings and every kind of obligation. Tony and Pepper had been to an event earlier that day, and Loki had gone out on his own unnamed business. But now it was evening, quiet and cool, and they were home. Tony clattered away in his workshop and Pepper sat in Loki’s lap atop a couch in the great room, ostensibly relaxing despite the work in her hands.

“You’re gritting your teeth,” Loki observed softly, “And you shake your head slightly every few minutes, as if you’re imagining arguing with someone. What has Tony done?”

Pepper sighed and looked up at the ceiling. Her shoulders sagged with released tension at having her annoyance called out, but at the same time her walls went up. “It’s nothing,” she muttered and returned to her work.

“God of lies, Pepper,” Loki reminded her.

Pepper stilled and closer her eyes tightly in aggravated resignation. “Funny how you only say that when you want me to stop lying.”

“At any rate, I think I can guess. A formal dinner that influences the state of the world, and he arrived late, or improperly dressed, or gave some ridiculous toast that insulted half the guests…” Loki took in Pepper’s expression. “...Or all of the above.”

“And it’s not just today!” Pepper finally started fuming. “He always does this! Have you seen the youtube videos? Wherever there are people watching, well, there’s Tony, making an ass of himself. And if he’s not being a public fool, then he’s not where he’s supposed to be because he’s almost getting himself killed in some completely unnecessary way, and just for one day -- one day -- I thought he could grow up and be in the right place at the right time! I mean, is that so much to ask?”

“To grow up in one day? I doubt you really believed that.”

“You’re right. I knew this would happen. I knew he couldn’t do what I asked. I knew this would be like every other stupid time I need something from him. Because there’s always something else, some reason he can’t do it. Because if he’s not building something, he’s taking on the world in some ridiculous lone-man vendetta, and it’s always urgent and it always has to be him fighting it. He doesn’t let these things go, he can’t leave anything unquestioned, can’t leave a polite lie uncorrected, or take a jibe quietly, no matter how much better it would be, no matter how much more smoothly everything would go ninety percent of the time if he could just sit quietly and act like… like a responsible adult or....” Pepper struggled for words.

Loki was perfectly quiet and attentive as he listened, and he listened to the words under her words -- sometimes she hated that -- and when she added nothing, he said, “Do you want Tony to be less than he is?”

Pepper felt her face go hot. “No! No, of course not. I just want him to more careful with his image!”

“It’s one and the same, isn’t it? You can’t have both, darling. He can bend to people’s expectations, become stately and reliable and predictable, or he can be as he is now: infuriating and brilliant, brutal and honest, formidable and clumsily endearing. Were he to attempt to pander more than he already does, a bitterness would set in, and the fire in him would go out.”

“You’re quoting Jack Dawson,” Pepper complained, turning her head to look at Loki admonishingly. “I never should have let you watch Titanic.”

“It was your idea, love, and an inspiring one. I’ll never look at Tony’s vintage car collection the same way again.”

Pepper fought down a smile at that set of memories. Tony had gone to bed early one night when he heard that Loki and Pepper intended to watch the sappy romance. To this day, the inventor still hadn’t heard about the resulting escapades into his garage.

She ignored the light of reminiscent mischief in Loki’s eyes and forged on with her point. “But it’s a matter of respect. I asked Tony to be there at a certain time and in a certain state. And he agreed!”

“That, I think, was his mistake,” Loki mused. “He makes promises he hasn’t the self-awareness to keep.”

“That’s what I mean. He doesn’t respect me!”

Loki gave her a look. A wry, questioning look with one eyebrow raised and the other tilted sharply inward, and it all translated to something like, Really? Now, I could have sworn you knew how to think.

“...Tony does respect me,” Pepper amended grudgingly after a pause.

The look didn’t let up.

“Tony respects me a lot.”

“...”

“I don’t think Tony actually respects anyone except me,” Pepper finally sighed, giving in and leaning back into Loki’s shoulder.

Loki chuckled. “Not as anything more than formidable opponent, no.”

“He doesn’t even respect himself,” she added, fuming again, now with far more resignation and accuracy.

“Not as anything more than a formidable opponent, no,” Loki repeated with renewed humor in his voice.

“Dear god, that explains a lot, doesn’t it?”

“Dear mortal, I think it does.”

She whacked him lightly on the shoulder that wasn’t supporting her head. Then she relaxed again and spoke uncertainly. “Should I stop asking him to change for me?”

Loki tensed a little. “Never. You’re his home, Pepper. You’re the star by which he navigates. You fight him at every turn, and in doing so you keep him whole. He’d be lost without you.”

You mean you would be, Pepper thought, but she didn’t point out Loki’s lapse into Freudian projection. It was an insight into both men, and she didn’t want to discourage Loki’s uncanny habit of putting words to the inexplicable, and reminding her that knowing Tony better than he knew himself did not excuse her from the task of learning more of him.

“But I should stop asking him to change for them,” she concluded.

“They are never satisfied,” Loki said by way of agreement. “The more you work to serve them, the more they mock you. The more you bend to make them proud, the more they break you.”

Pepper nodded, many suspicions about Loki’s history sliding into place along with the revelation that Tony, if pushed, could fall the same way.

Loki had let a silence descend while Pepper considered his words, and now he broke that silence in carefully bland tone. “Are you still angry with him?”

“I s’pose not. Why?”

Before Loki could answer, Tony came upstairs. The inventor took in the sight of his lovers with warm affection and a trace of stifled affrontedness. “Jarvis just said you were home,” he said. He sat down and lounged expansively on the couch next to Loki, a subtle gesture of competition communicating something like, Hey, I have a lap too.

“I arrived an hour ago,” said Loki.

“I informed Mr. Stark of your arrival an hour ago, sir,” Jarvis supplied.

Tony frowned up at the traitorous AI. “Guess I only just noticed. Where were you all day, anyway?”

Loki started nuzzling at Pepper’s neck again, and his hands drifted down to her hips. “I’ll tell you later.”

“You say that a lot,” Tony complained, but he scootched in, pressing his body up against Loki’s side.

“With you two in the room, there’s always something more enjoyable to do than divulge my secrets.”

“Oh really?” Pepper asked, and there was a rare mischief in her voice. She shifted in Loki’s lap so she could look at him properly, drawing a few sharp breaths from him with the motions. “I think you’re going to tell us now.”

Loki titled his head like he was considering any number of replies, but eventually he settled on, “Make me,” and smiled the smile of a doomed man.

A long while later Loki found himself in bed, his back to the mattress, comforter and top layer of black silk sheets tangled and tossed aside along with any clothes that had managed to follow the trio all the way to the bedroom. Pepper was sprawled next to him, leaning up to face Loki and tease at his mouth with hers. Loki kissed back, lethally soft and teasing in turn, enjoying the dance of it. Pleasant heat was pooling low in his abdomen, tightening with the slow pace like a web of fine cords, spasming pleasantly as Tony’s fingers flexed inside him, pressed gently where they made Loki see sparks, but moved too, too gently, not granting enough grind or pressure to let that coiling heat do much besides wind tighter.

Tony was kneeling between Loki’s spread legs, fingers buried in his ass, looking him up and down appreciatively as fine shudders traveled the graceful lines of Loki’s body.

Loki felt a new splinter of electricity snap through his body as Tony’s mouth wrapped around the head of his cock, and he gasped against Pepper’s mouth. The woman grinned and moved to bite at his lower lip while Tony’s mouth moved to envelop him, still moving ever-so-slowly. And now Pepper’s mouth was covering Loki’s, a long, thorough kiss that smothered and swallowed his groans of pleasure and frustration.

He made a higher sound when Tony’s fingers and the mouth both pulled away, leaving him empty and bare.

Then the mouth he was happily dancing with retreated out of reach and he discovered that Pepper was holding his arms down. Loki knew he had the strength to resist that hold, human hands were of such a delicate structure, but he could no more find that strength in this moment than he could halt the bending of the universe. He looked up at the smiling woman and wondered not for the first time how his heart had gotten so thoroughly tied up in hers and what it would take to cut himself free.

But he was just as happy to leave that problem for some distant century and devote this one to more immediate questions, like where the hell Tony’s mouth had gone. Loki tilted his head to look down at the brilliantly insolent mortal, and the god’s hands and his voice both shook as he spoke through clenched teeth. “Tony, if you don’t continue, I swear…”

Tony grinned gleefully. “Been waiting ages to get back at you for this one.” He crossed his arms atop Loki’s thighs in a pose of unhurried attention. “Well?”

“Pepper,” Loki heard himself begging, only to realize instantly that she would be no help. Annoyed with himself, he turned his head sharply to face away from her, and the motion grew into a full body writhe that Loki couldn’t suppress, fascia and muscles contracting under pale skin of their own volition as frustration twisted at him. He made a weak huh sound that wasn’t a sob, except that perhaps it was.

But he held to the deeper stubbornness of a liesmith. It was one thing to lose his composure and another thing entirely to loosen his tongue.

Things went on from there, a blurring, pounding desperation, frustration that built and built with time and soft, warm touches and became something more like despair. Pepper was trailing kisses and light teasing bites up his neck, avoiding Loki’s mouth so he couldn’t engage her unless he chose to speak, and Loki would lose the whole game if the wrong words came out. Tony was licking at his lower abdomen, at the forward points of his iliac bone. One hand was rubbing up and down his inner thigh over and over, thumb following the same line with each pass and lighting up that single abstract stretch of skin with burning sensitivity so the light touch and the rough skin of that thumb almost hurt.

The the pattern disrupted and that hand just kept sliding up and those fingers started stroking at his entrance again and Loki pressed his eyes tightly shut as his mouth worked open and closed, devoting all his will to not whimpering or calling out or telling Tony to go on.

But impossibly slowly, Tony did move, pushing his fingers in, probing and exploring, searching experimentally as if the damn man didn’t already know exactly where…

Loki felt his will start to give, a rip flowing across what had been a solid cable of defiance, the stretch before the snap and break. He writhed again, hips grinding down pointedly to seek an increase in pressure. And Tony gave it to him for just a perfect split second before pulling back a few critical millimeters and grinning again at the broken sound Loki made.

Pepper spoke against the curve of his shoulder. “It ends as soon as you want it to, Loki. Where were you today?”

Loki struggled to think, but these two made that so damn difficult. His senses were full of the present, full of clever fingers and warm lips, the too-faint taste of Pepper lingering in his mouth and the smell of freshly laundered and freshly sweat-soaked sheets.

Today. They were asking about today. Where had he been? Well, today had smelled of trees and autumn fruit, there’d been the crunch of twigs underfoot and the relish and mischief of a trick underway… “Woods,” Loki managed. “Asgard. The woods near A-aah…”

Pepper’s hand, a shock of warm touch wrapped around his cock and giving him another agonizing shadow of the pressure and friction he needed. Tony moved aside and now Pepper was straddling Loki, her hands gone from his arms in favor of supporting her weight and lining him up and…

Loki’s eyes went wide and snapped to Pepper’s as she took him into her, as slick pressure surrounded him and need-please-more-not-enough abruptly reversed course and turned into searing rightness and dizzying overload. Loki was shaking all over now with relief and arousal, grinding up into her and feeling lovely heat scatter like shrapnel and flood his body from each motion. “I…” he tried to take a breath and managed only a series of sharp, shuddering gasps. “...I take it my a-answer was satis… satisfactory.”

“For now,” she granted. “Roll over.” And she tilted off to the side, pulling him along with her until she was on her back and Loki was on top. Loki grinned, took firm hold of Pepper’s hip and made use of his newfound leverage in a few forceful, controlled thrusts that made her throw her head back and moan, high-pitched and briefly lost.

Then Loki was distracted by Tony settling in behind him, kissing hot, wandering paths along his shoulder, pushing his legs apart between Pepper’s thighs. Loki was riding a little too close to the edge for that to be a good idea, but Tony’s hands and mouth moved with lazy and marvelous force as the mortal maneuvered him into place, and Loki voiced no objection. Gripping the god’s hips, Tony slid into him in one sharp motion, a swift intrusion of stretch and rasping friction and… that was it.

Loki felt a change in pressure, a lurching dip as the wave started breaking, ripping away all his sense of gravity and orientation and leaving only -- Pull and give. Momentum and surrender. Careening distance and close, shuddering warmth. Flesh against flesh and Pepper and Tony pressed tight against him, too close and pushing wonderfully closer, the grinding pressure of it intimate and scaldingly right like a broken bone snapped into place. Or a bone being soldered into place, seeing as the burn only got sharper as Loki felt himself melted into it.

His two lovers kept moving, jerking hips and torn gasps and tangled legs, riding him through it and past it, and it hurt. And then it didn’t, and he was hardening again bit by bit as need washed back in, the tide of it rising and falling while it alternated with a world of lingering bliss.

Pepper was tightening around him periodically, sending jolts jarring through his nerves. Loki reached down between them, fingers seeking out her clit and kneading with measured pressure. Pepper’s finger reached up and threaded through his hair, her whimpers and moans turning higher, and abruptly more urgent as he slid off to the side, nimbly working his hand out and down in an arc, just inside the line where pelvis met thigh, pressing in and dragging his thumb along the ridge of the bone there. Pepper made an encouraging sound and rocked into the touch, pushing him deeper inside her in the process.

He was fully hard again, and Tony was pushing in and out of him with unrelenting force. Loki moved along with Tony’s thrusts, eyes falling closed and lips expelling a helpless breath every time Tony slammed past his prostate and Pepper slid hot around him.

Things continued like that until Pepper gasped, coming around him, drawing breath hard enough that a little of her voice caught roughly in the sound. Loki stared in abject wonder at the pleasure playing across her sweat-slick face, the scrunching of her eyebrows and the visible lines of tendon in her neck and the tangle of copper hair that surrounded her. Everything about her was bright against the darkness, and she was calling out against the silence, “Uh, oh god, yes Loki, yes!”

Loki leaned forward, kissed her for her dearness and with deft fingers he fiddled and played and pressed her for her screams.

The shaking of her body intensified and it ran through him like an earthquake. Loki jerked out of rhythm, tightening around Tony, catching the mortal off guard and hearing him call out raggedly. After a few thrusts the two men found their tempo again and they rode Pepper through the aftershocks and listened together to the low hums and high-pitched whimpers they drove from her.

There was a lull in sound. Even as the two men kept moving, Pepper’s vocalizations quieted to low, satisfied moans, her hands relaxing and dropping to slide up and down Loki’s arms in a motion almost soothing, and more than that simply reveling in the feeling of skin sliding over skin. Loki was sharply aware of Tony inside him, still dictating the pace of their motions and pushing through him almost callously and the heat low in the pit of Loki’s stomach was winding up tightly again and he wanted...

Tony breathed, “Loki,” with low, rough affection.

Loki shivered and drank in the sound like cool water. “Tony,” he called back, voice hoarse and flat with candor. An acknowledgement, a world of things flowed though the word: love, possessiveness, admiration, desire. This was how they told each other. The days were all contention and smug quips, a constant battle of wits. All the things they would never quite say to each other were here, communicated in the short syllables of fondly spoken names. “Tony.”

Tony grunted and shuddered and came, and Loki buried his face against Pepper’s neck, this time giving up his own control much more deliberately than before as Tony’s erratic motions slammed through him. Loki came with a strained cry and Pepper’s arms moved up again to circle his head, holding him through the brief moment of reeling powerlessness that was willfully letting go. Orgasm wracked through him, pushing him further into her and melting everything solid.

Then bliss again, redoubled and breathless, the lazy golden heat of it rolling through his blood, this time accompanied by stillness from his lovers. Pepper’s shoulder was warm under his lips, smelling of salt and other lovely things. Tony’s beard pricked lightly at his back as the human breathed contentedly against his spine.

The three eventually moved to disentangle, shifting to rest more comfortably together. Loki lay, back flat on the bed, his naked arms thrown out to the sides and he stared up at the ceiling with a certain contemplative windedness. “I’ve made a decision.”

“Have you?” This was Pepper.

“Yes. I’m keeping both of you.”

“Does this mean we’re marrying you?” Tony asked with suspicion.

Loki snorted. “No.” Moving to lean up on his elbows, he met their baffled looks, reached into thin air and pulled out two gold colored apples, freshly stolen. “Nothing so temporary.”