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Title: Capacities Unknown
Fandom: Thor (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Pairing: Thor/Loki
Rating: R
Words: 3500
Summary: Sweet jesus, no, thinks Tony. No, no, no. He’s used to seeing Thor and Loki steal kisses when they think no one’s looking, but this? This is something else entirely.
A/N: This sprang from a throwaway line I hadn’t intended to do anything with, but the idea of voyeur!Tony just wouldn’t let go. Small nod to New Avengers by Brian Michael Bendis here. Title from The Carpenters' cover of Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft.
~
“Wait,” says Tony, raising a metal-clad hand to point at Loki. “What’s this guy doing here?”
They’re supposed to be on a small reconnaissance mission just outside of New York City, investigating reports of oddly flattened tracts of farmland. Tony thinks they’re bogus bumpkin reports of strange happenings for media fame; the average weekly UFO sighting and all that.
He wouldn’t put it past more weird aliens to show up, though—not since the Chitauri invasion months ago.
He, Steve, Bruce, and Thor had been loading up an unmarked van, ready to set out to one of the farms, when Loki materialized from out of nowhere behind Thor.
“Haven’t you heard? Fury,” Loki says smugly, leaving off the respectful Director, “has appointed me as a consultant on this case, due to the possibility of alien activity.”
Tony rolls his eyes; Loki hasn’t been their enemy for quite some time, but it doesn’t make him any less pretentious. “Fine,” he says. “Just don’t slow us down.”
Loki opens his mouth in false shock, lips forming an affronted o. He’s about to make a pithy comeback when Thor scoops him up into his arms. “He will not,” Thor says eagerly, as Loki struggles half-heartedly in his grasp. “I swear it.”
Not an hour earlier, shortly after their mission briefing, Tony remembers Thor being reluctant to leave the city. He’s pretty sure he knows why now, and swallows a laugh, because Thor’s gone completely gung-ho, holding a writhing Loki like a kid holding up a scruffy dog and asking Can we keep him?
Tony slams the loading doors to the van shut and nods. “Okay. Let’s head out.”
While he and Thor could fly there, it’s a long way for Steve and Bruce, so they embark on what feels like the longest road trip ever: two hours of AC/DC on the lowest volume, punctuated only by Loki’s grumbles of “Are we there yet?” and “Norns, I could have teleported faster than this.”
~
No one answers the door at the little cottage on the farm when they arrive.
Thor shifts uneasily on the rickety, paint-chipped stairs, and Tony watches as Loki presses a hand to the small of Thor’s back. Whether it’s for comfort or reassurance, Tony’s not sure, but the minute way Thor relaxes into Loki’s touch makes Tony crave a little reassurance of his own. The crumpled crops outside and the lack of animals and anything alive here is starting to unnerve him—he’s not used to all this quiet—and he grips the rotten wooden railing unnecessarily hard.
When no one comes to the door after a second, more forceful knock, Loki throws his hands up in frustration.
“Enough waiting,” he snarls. He positions himself in front of the door, palms out and eyes closed, like he’s ready to blast it off its hinges with a force wave.
“Wait—you can’t just—” Steve manages, before his protests are drowned out by the sound of the door crumpling inward.
There’s no mess, no cleanup needed, just the front door of a house twisting in on itself like paper. As Tony steps over the gnarled wood, he can’t but admire Loki’s style; his investigative methods are invasive as hell, but they are effective.
Steve’s the first to find the desiccated husks of the people who must have owned the farm. The bodies lie tucked away in a corner of the kitchen, arms still outflung in fear.
“Whatever these things are, they’re not friendlies,” he says gravely.
“Yes, so glad your analysis has so far determined that they—what is the phrase—‘do not come in peace’,” snaps Loki, sweeping past him. He pokes around further in the house, and though Steve looks like he wants to squawk something about desecrating the deceased’s home, Tony stops him with a hand on his arm.
“Find anything?” he asks instead.
Loki’s examining an overturned table. “There seems to be an amorphous grey substance gathered in the corner here,” he says. He reaches down to touch it with an ungloved hand when Thor grabs him by the wrist and snaps his hand away.
“Loki, no,” he says sharply. “Whatever that is, we have no knowledge of its origin. You cannot simply go about touching things as you please.”
“Oh?” Loki muses, twining his fingers into Thor’s cape, his red a perfect match for Loki’s green. Tony secretly calls them the Christmas Wonder Twins. “And what if I go about touching things that please you?”
The brightest crimson blooms across Thor’s cheeks and he sputters at Loki, who only laughs and draws his hand away. Tony sighs; as amusing as their banter is, it’s sometimes as bad as the dialogue in industry-grade porn.
Besides the fecund scent of earth lingering in the air, they find nothing else of note in the house, and move on to the barn outside. Thankfully, there aren’t any dead animals inside, dried-out or otherwise.
“Dibs on this…patch of straw for tonight,” Tony calls out, flopping onto his hard-won pile of the stuff. “It’s so dry,” he whines. “And scratchy. This is terrible stakeout bedding.”
Bruce just blinks and claims a spot nearby, while Steve shrugs and says he’s had worse.
Loki immediately claims the loft of the barn for himself and Thor, sequestered up and away from the others. When Tony looks at Thor with mock outrage, Thor just shrugs and smiles sheepishly. It’s the smile that says Loki does what he wants.
~
They don’t find anything during the day, and a few hours after sunset, they all decide to call it a night.
“Maybe one of us should keep watch,” Tony suggests, before they start settling in. “You know. In case our ‘non-friendlies’ decide to come back and bump us off in the night.”
“An excellent idea!” Thor agrees brightly, settling into the loft. “I shall take the first watch.”
When they’ve finished divvying up the rest of the shifts, Loki cuddles into Thor’s side with a sigh. Steve and Bruce choose wisely not to comment on that, and instead, find their own niches in the barn, on either side of Tony.
Tony lets himself collapse onto the scratchy straw, though he supposes it isn’t all that bad from inside the Mark VII. He’s just about to drop off to sleep when he hears some low moaning.
“Thor,” Loki’s whispering, “we shouldn’t. Your comrades, they—” Evidently, something Thor does changes his mind, because then Loki’s gasping, “Yes, Thor, like that.”
Tony lies stock-still. There’s a little more moaning. Some odd slicking noises.
Sweet jesus, no, thinks Tony. No, no, no. He’s used to seeing Thor and Loki steal kisses when they think no one’s looking, but this? This is something else entirely.
A few odd grunts from Thor follow, and Tony’s caught between What are they doing and Oh god, I think I know. With a side of Some watch Thor makes; we could all be killed down here and he wouldn’t even notice.
The still silence of the night is pierced by Loki’s high, sharp cry.
Fuck, thinks Tony. On second thought, no. Don’t fuck. Please.
It’s too late. By the sounds of Loki’s soft, undulating cries and breathy moans, it looks like they already are.
Tony cranes his neck an inch from his spot on the barn floor, and—yep, those are Loki’s legs in the air, hiked all the way to Thor’s shoulders and—
He’s startled by a gentle nudge to his ribs. It’s Steve, staring at him like a shocked guppy. He mouths something that looks like Is this real life? but could just as easily be What’s going on? Tony doesn’t know; he’s no lip reader.
He passes the nudge on to Bruce, who easily has the best seat in the house (okay, barn, but still), but Bruce apparently wants to squander his seat by sleeping through the unexpected Norse god porn instead.
Maybe that’s a good thing. No, scratch the ‘maybe’; it is definitely a good thing. The last thing they need on a reconnaissance mission is for Bruce to Hulk out before they’ve even found the culprit.
Both Tony and Steve’s heads snap up to the loft again when they hear a half-choked sob of, “Brother, please.”
Tony’s jaw drops open, because that’s Loki’s voice, and Loki never calls Thor ‘brother’. Ever. Even on pain of death. Though maybe this counts, because they seem like they’re soon approaching the ‘little death’.
No, Tony reflects desperately, I did not just go there.
The rarity of it must turn Thor on more than ever, like it’s a secret kink of theirs, calling each other ‘brother’ even when they know they’re not related by blood, because Thor’s started moving more vigorously, just slamming into Loki now, and Loki, well—he’s not even trying to keep his voice down anymore. Neither of them are.
Tony scrubs a hand over his face; he’s pretty sure he can hear the old barn creaking under their ministrations. If the barn collapses in on them tonight, he won’t even bother looking to S.H.I.E.L.D. for compensation; no, Asgard will be paying out every penny it has for endangering lives due to its incestuous princes. Who can’t keep it in their pants long enough to finish a recon mission.
Loki’s crying out on each stroke now, with little huffs of “Yes, right there, keep hitting—ah—there,” as Thor pounds him into their soft bed of straw.
Tony isn’t sure if Loki comes first or if Thor does, but they release synchronized, strangled shouts, and he hears Loki’s shuddering breaths against Thor’s mouth as they exchange sloppy, open-mouthed kisses.
Thank god they’re done, Tony decides. Maybe now I can get some shut-eye.
About thirty seconds of blissful silence elapse, time in which Tony manages to close his eyes and almost drift off again, before there’s another hitched gasp from Loki and the straw in the loft starts rustling again.
“Get off me, you oaf,” Loki snarls, but it sounds half-hearted at best. “Have you not had your fill—”
“Of you? Never,” Thor growls, insistent. His next words, a breathy moan of “Loki. My Loki,” are stifled with a wet, presumably messy kiss.
Tony muffles a tiny groan of his own and shuts his eyes more tightly, as if by doing so, he can shut out the sound. All he can think of now is Their refractory period is almost at zero. It does not exist. Damn Asgardians and their non-existent refractory periods. Damn them.
Damn them all.
~
By the time the sun rises, Thor and Loki are, not surprisingly, in good spirits. Bruce, having taken the last watch, remains his usual nonchalant self.
Tony and Steve rub at eyes sore from too much not-sleep and free-per-view porn.
It’s probably why it takes Tony a moment to process the strange, vaguely amphibious grey bodies that Loki and Thor toss down at their feet.
“What are these?” he asks, his tongue feeling slow and thick in his mouth. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows, but this is still surprisingly fast; he hadn’t expected to find the enemy until later tonight. Or even the next day.
“They are part of a race of shapeshifters,” Loki says. “We caught them trying to emulate our forms this morning, having worn out their human counterparts. After interrogation, it appears that the flattening of the fields was an early attempt at terraforming regions of Midgard to make it more habitable for their kind.”
Thor nods in agreement. “We should take them back to S.H.I.E.L.D. to determine if any more of their kind will be sent, and if so, when. And how many more.”
“Wait a minute—you speak their language?” Tony asks, incredulous. One of the bodies on the ground twitches at him, a tendril of oozing grey and Tony takes a half-step back. “Aren’t they from another world or something?”
Loki raises a brow, gracing him with an expression that speaks volumes of what he thinks of Tony’s intellect. “We interrogated them in the Allspeak, in the same manner we communicate with you.”
There’s a long silence before Steve goes, “So. So…maybe that wasn’t you in the loft?” He sounds almost hopeful.
Tony flicks a glance to Steve. He’s onto something here; if the two they thought were Thor and Loki were actually the shapeshifters, then that bizarre tryst in the barn loft would make sense. But no—something doesn’t add up. Both Thor and Loki said they had found the aliens at sunrise. There’s also the fact that, as talented as the shapeshifters might be, there’s no way they could emulate the unique blend of animosity and affection these two have developed from a millennium together.
Thor clinches it when he says, “Loki and I were in the loft all night.” He looks confused.
Steve turns the most amusing shade of red, and sputters while Tony sighs. He’s going to have to break it to Steve gently, and later, that their two resident gods are not only brothers (adoptive though they may be), but also, yes, boning each other.
Bruce, who hasn’t said a word until now, blinks owlishly from behind his glasses. “No. I’m not convinced. I think you’re the shapeshifters.” He squares his shoulders, though Tony’s not sure how much use his Doctor Banner persona will be here without the Hulk, and points at Loki. “I heard you call him brother,” he accuses.
As if something Loki moaned in the throes of passion could somehow be used as proof.
Tony winces internally, before making two realizations: one, Bruce was actually awake when all that Thor/ Loki brother-stuff went down, and two, now both Loki and Thor will know the three of them lay there listening and possibly watching them while they—
“No,” Loki all but hisses, “I would never.” He glares at Thor. It doesn’t take an Asgardian or a genius to figure out his incredulous expression, the one that says I thought you said they were asleep. When Thor gives him a look like a kicked puppy, Loki amends quickly, “Perhaps under…special circumstances.”
Like when you’re under Thor, Tony nearly says, but this isn’t a fire he wants to add fuel to, either way.
Thor, bless him, still manages to smile at the rest of them. “My friends,” he says, with what Tony labels ‘most awkward grin in the Avengers’ shared history’, “could we not focus on the fact that though this enemy has been vanquished, we must find out how many still remain?”
The others sigh, Loki still glares daggers at Thor, and together, they lift and transport the unknown life forms to the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility.
That is, Tony, Steve and Bruce do, loading the near-corpses into the van; Loki just swans off and wraps his arms around his brother’s neck while Thor takes off with Mjölnir into the sky. Tony’s pretty sure he heard Loki murmur, “Take me home, brotherrr,” his voice low and sultry in Thor’s ear, just before they took off.
Somewhere in the distance, a soft rumble of thunder follows.
Tony looks up; there are, oddly enough, no clouds in the sky. “Seeing as how Thor’s the god of thunder and all,” he starts, “do you think that’s him and Loki getting—”
“I’d prefer not to think about that,” Bruce says quietly. He thumbs the car key into the ignition.
No one says a word on the way back, even when the light, drizzling rain that’s started turns into a torrential downpour.
~
The next time Fury assigns Tony on a mission to work with Thor and Loki again, Tony puts his foot down.
“No. Nuh-uh. No way am I working with those two again. Thor, maybe. But not Thor and Loki.”
Steve, who’s also been assigned to this mission, flushes a dark red and seconds the motion.
Fury crosses his arms, unimpressed. “Either one of you want to tell me what the problem is?”
“They, uh,” Steve offers helplessly, and looks to Tony for a leg to stand on.
“They have sex,” Tony says frankly. “Lots of it. During the mission, after the mission. Even after they beat up some baddies. Maybe it’s a celebratory thing, I don’t know. But they—”
“They get the job done,” snaps Fury. “While the rest of you were sleeping, they caught those things that have been lurking in the fields.”
“With all due respect, sir,” starts Steve, “we would have—”
Fury fixes him with a glare that brooks no argument. With its bulging and pulsing, the spider web of veins over his missing eye seems almost sentient. Like a veiny eyepatch-monster, ready to leap off his face and kill someone.
Tony marches them both out of there post-haste, because between two amorous Asgardians and one furious Director, it’s a sure bet on which one’s the better choice.
~
“It is,” Loki says later, as the four of them huddle behind a car, hiding from an alpha-male version of the aliens they interrogated earlier.
Just investigate, the threat will be contained, Fury had said. What he hadn’t said was that Tony, Steve, Thor and Loki were the containment team.
“What is?” asks Tony.
“It is a celebratory thing,” Loki says cheekily. “And a preparatory thing.” He smiles, sharp and unabashed. “A thing for all occasions.”
Tony groans. “You were listening?” A car, the crushed husk of what used to be a canary-yellow Hummer, hurtles overhead, dashing debris of sparking wires and keening metal scant feet away.
“Guys? I think we have some more pressing concerns right now,” Steve says flatly, as the grey creature tramples another few cars underfoot. A nightmarish monster-truck dominating an imaginary derby.
Loki casts a seemingly coy glance Thor’s way.
“Enough of this!” Thor growls. He leaps out from behind the car, drags Steve and Tony into a three-pronged attack formation, and they take out the behemoth of a creature in almost no time at all.
“Well,” Steve says after, dusting himself off, “I won’t say that was easy, but it looks like Thor can really get going when he puts his mind to it.”
There are some light scratches on his shield and a trail of claw marks along his upper torso, but neither of them are worse for the wear. Tony just counts himself lucky that his suit’s still mostly intact, despite the sparks shooting out from his arm.
“Speaking of Thor, where is he?” asks Steve. “We should probably report back on the situation here.”
A series of soft, pleasured cries emanate from a nearby alleyway, and Tony fights the urge to roll his eyes. “Celebrating,” he deadpans. “Where else?”
~
When Tony’s forced to retire the Mark VII due to what he calls ‘irreconcilable damages’, he incorporates a new feature into the next suit he builds.
“These panels take into account sound levels in the surrounding environment and filter them accordingly,” Tony says proudly, turning and showing off the helmet in his hands to Steve.
He doesn’t need to share the panels’ express purpose; everyone already knows.
“What about me?” asks Steve. “I don’t have anything like your Iron Man suit.”
“Good question,” Tony replies. He rummages through the odds and ends of his worktable and tosses Steve a plastic packet. “Here’s the answer.”
“Earplugs?” Steve raises a brow as he examines the two orange foam bits. “I guess they are pretty cost-effective.”
“Cheap, replaceable, and wonderful,” assures Tony. “Best of all, you won’t have to accidentally hear Thor and Loki trying to make babies.” He finds himself enjoying the charming flush that spreads across Steve’s cheeks at that.
“I did not think that was even possible,” says a voice from behind them, thoughtful. “Is it, brother?”
Shit, Tony realizes; somehow Thor and Loki have wormed their way curiously into his workshop and overheard. “Uh, no. Bad idea,” Tony says quickly. “This Avengers tower? No babysitters. Or daycare services. And correct me if I’m wrong, but—” he jabs a finger in their direction, “—aren’t you both men?”
Much to Tony’s chagrin, Loki only smirks and looks to Thor. “It hardly means we cannot try,” he says, winding his fingers subtly around Thor’s waist.
Thor looks delighted at this prospect (poor guy doesn’t need much to make him happy; even a kind word from Loki lights him up like the Rockefeller on Christmas), beaming and slinging an automatic arm around Loki’s shoulders.
Tony shoves his face into his hands. Out of the frying pan, he thinks.
“And into the fire,” Steve says, completing the thought. He eyes Thor and Loki with a new sort of caution. As if at any moment a being might spring full-grown from either one of them.
They’re gods too; it just might happen.
“What fire?” Thor inquires, puzzled. When no conflagration is forthcoming, he shrugs and turns to Loki with his hundred-watt smile, the one that crinkles his eyes at the corners and shines brightest only when he’s with his brother. “When do we start?”
Fandom: Thor (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Pairing: Thor/Loki
Rating: R
Words: 3500
Summary: Sweet jesus, no, thinks Tony. No, no, no. He’s used to seeing Thor and Loki steal kisses when they think no one’s looking, but this? This is something else entirely.
A/N: This sprang from a throwaway line I hadn’t intended to do anything with, but the idea of voyeur!Tony just wouldn’t let go. Small nod to New Avengers by Brian Michael Bendis here. Title from The Carpenters' cover of Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft.
~
“Wait,” says Tony, raising a metal-clad hand to point at Loki. “What’s this guy doing here?”
They’re supposed to be on a small reconnaissance mission just outside of New York City, investigating reports of oddly flattened tracts of farmland. Tony thinks they’re bogus bumpkin reports of strange happenings for media fame; the average weekly UFO sighting and all that.
He wouldn’t put it past more weird aliens to show up, though—not since the Chitauri invasion months ago.
He, Steve, Bruce, and Thor had been loading up an unmarked van, ready to set out to one of the farms, when Loki materialized from out of nowhere behind Thor.
“Haven’t you heard? Fury,” Loki says smugly, leaving off the respectful Director, “has appointed me as a consultant on this case, due to the possibility of alien activity.”
Tony rolls his eyes; Loki hasn’t been their enemy for quite some time, but it doesn’t make him any less pretentious. “Fine,” he says. “Just don’t slow us down.”
Loki opens his mouth in false shock, lips forming an affronted o. He’s about to make a pithy comeback when Thor scoops him up into his arms. “He will not,” Thor says eagerly, as Loki struggles half-heartedly in his grasp. “I swear it.”
Not an hour earlier, shortly after their mission briefing, Tony remembers Thor being reluctant to leave the city. He’s pretty sure he knows why now, and swallows a laugh, because Thor’s gone completely gung-ho, holding a writhing Loki like a kid holding up a scruffy dog and asking Can we keep him?
Tony slams the loading doors to the van shut and nods. “Okay. Let’s head out.”
While he and Thor could fly there, it’s a long way for Steve and Bruce, so they embark on what feels like the longest road trip ever: two hours of AC/DC on the lowest volume, punctuated only by Loki’s grumbles of “Are we there yet?” and “Norns, I could have teleported faster than this.”
~
No one answers the door at the little cottage on the farm when they arrive.
Thor shifts uneasily on the rickety, paint-chipped stairs, and Tony watches as Loki presses a hand to the small of Thor’s back. Whether it’s for comfort or reassurance, Tony’s not sure, but the minute way Thor relaxes into Loki’s touch makes Tony crave a little reassurance of his own. The crumpled crops outside and the lack of animals and anything alive here is starting to unnerve him—he’s not used to all this quiet—and he grips the rotten wooden railing unnecessarily hard.
When no one comes to the door after a second, more forceful knock, Loki throws his hands up in frustration.
“Enough waiting,” he snarls. He positions himself in front of the door, palms out and eyes closed, like he’s ready to blast it off its hinges with a force wave.
“Wait—you can’t just—” Steve manages, before his protests are drowned out by the sound of the door crumpling inward.
There’s no mess, no cleanup needed, just the front door of a house twisting in on itself like paper. As Tony steps over the gnarled wood, he can’t but admire Loki’s style; his investigative methods are invasive as hell, but they are effective.
Steve’s the first to find the desiccated husks of the people who must have owned the farm. The bodies lie tucked away in a corner of the kitchen, arms still outflung in fear.
“Whatever these things are, they’re not friendlies,” he says gravely.
“Yes, so glad your analysis has so far determined that they—what is the phrase—‘do not come in peace’,” snaps Loki, sweeping past him. He pokes around further in the house, and though Steve looks like he wants to squawk something about desecrating the deceased’s home, Tony stops him with a hand on his arm.
“Find anything?” he asks instead.
Loki’s examining an overturned table. “There seems to be an amorphous grey substance gathered in the corner here,” he says. He reaches down to touch it with an ungloved hand when Thor grabs him by the wrist and snaps his hand away.
“Loki, no,” he says sharply. “Whatever that is, we have no knowledge of its origin. You cannot simply go about touching things as you please.”
“Oh?” Loki muses, twining his fingers into Thor’s cape, his red a perfect match for Loki’s green. Tony secretly calls them the Christmas Wonder Twins. “And what if I go about touching things that please you?”
The brightest crimson blooms across Thor’s cheeks and he sputters at Loki, who only laughs and draws his hand away. Tony sighs; as amusing as their banter is, it’s sometimes as bad as the dialogue in industry-grade porn.
Besides the fecund scent of earth lingering in the air, they find nothing else of note in the house, and move on to the barn outside. Thankfully, there aren’t any dead animals inside, dried-out or otherwise.
“Dibs on this…patch of straw for tonight,” Tony calls out, flopping onto his hard-won pile of the stuff. “It’s so dry,” he whines. “And scratchy. This is terrible stakeout bedding.”
Bruce just blinks and claims a spot nearby, while Steve shrugs and says he’s had worse.
Loki immediately claims the loft of the barn for himself and Thor, sequestered up and away from the others. When Tony looks at Thor with mock outrage, Thor just shrugs and smiles sheepishly. It’s the smile that says Loki does what he wants.
~
They don’t find anything during the day, and a few hours after sunset, they all decide to call it a night.
“Maybe one of us should keep watch,” Tony suggests, before they start settling in. “You know. In case our ‘non-friendlies’ decide to come back and bump us off in the night.”
“An excellent idea!” Thor agrees brightly, settling into the loft. “I shall take the first watch.”
When they’ve finished divvying up the rest of the shifts, Loki cuddles into Thor’s side with a sigh. Steve and Bruce choose wisely not to comment on that, and instead, find their own niches in the barn, on either side of Tony.
Tony lets himself collapse onto the scratchy straw, though he supposes it isn’t all that bad from inside the Mark VII. He’s just about to drop off to sleep when he hears some low moaning.
“Thor,” Loki’s whispering, “we shouldn’t. Your comrades, they—” Evidently, something Thor does changes his mind, because then Loki’s gasping, “Yes, Thor, like that.”
Tony lies stock-still. There’s a little more moaning. Some odd slicking noises.
Sweet jesus, no, thinks Tony. No, no, no. He’s used to seeing Thor and Loki steal kisses when they think no one’s looking, but this? This is something else entirely.
A few odd grunts from Thor follow, and Tony’s caught between What are they doing and Oh god, I think I know. With a side of Some watch Thor makes; we could all be killed down here and he wouldn’t even notice.
The still silence of the night is pierced by Loki’s high, sharp cry.
Fuck, thinks Tony. On second thought, no. Don’t fuck. Please.
It’s too late. By the sounds of Loki’s soft, undulating cries and breathy moans, it looks like they already are.
Tony cranes his neck an inch from his spot on the barn floor, and—yep, those are Loki’s legs in the air, hiked all the way to Thor’s shoulders and—
He’s startled by a gentle nudge to his ribs. It’s Steve, staring at him like a shocked guppy. He mouths something that looks like Is this real life? but could just as easily be What’s going on? Tony doesn’t know; he’s no lip reader.
He passes the nudge on to Bruce, who easily has the best seat in the house (okay, barn, but still), but Bruce apparently wants to squander his seat by sleeping through the unexpected Norse god porn instead.
Maybe that’s a good thing. No, scratch the ‘maybe’; it is definitely a good thing. The last thing they need on a reconnaissance mission is for Bruce to Hulk out before they’ve even found the culprit.
Both Tony and Steve’s heads snap up to the loft again when they hear a half-choked sob of, “Brother, please.”
Tony’s jaw drops open, because that’s Loki’s voice, and Loki never calls Thor ‘brother’. Ever. Even on pain of death. Though maybe this counts, because they seem like they’re soon approaching the ‘little death’.
No, Tony reflects desperately, I did not just go there.
The rarity of it must turn Thor on more than ever, like it’s a secret kink of theirs, calling each other ‘brother’ even when they know they’re not related by blood, because Thor’s started moving more vigorously, just slamming into Loki now, and Loki, well—he’s not even trying to keep his voice down anymore. Neither of them are.
Tony scrubs a hand over his face; he’s pretty sure he can hear the old barn creaking under their ministrations. If the barn collapses in on them tonight, he won’t even bother looking to S.H.I.E.L.D. for compensation; no, Asgard will be paying out every penny it has for endangering lives due to its incestuous princes. Who can’t keep it in their pants long enough to finish a recon mission.
Loki’s crying out on each stroke now, with little huffs of “Yes, right there, keep hitting—ah—there,” as Thor pounds him into their soft bed of straw.
Tony isn’t sure if Loki comes first or if Thor does, but they release synchronized, strangled shouts, and he hears Loki’s shuddering breaths against Thor’s mouth as they exchange sloppy, open-mouthed kisses.
Thank god they’re done, Tony decides. Maybe now I can get some shut-eye.
About thirty seconds of blissful silence elapse, time in which Tony manages to close his eyes and almost drift off again, before there’s another hitched gasp from Loki and the straw in the loft starts rustling again.
“Get off me, you oaf,” Loki snarls, but it sounds half-hearted at best. “Have you not had your fill—”
“Of you? Never,” Thor growls, insistent. His next words, a breathy moan of “Loki. My Loki,” are stifled with a wet, presumably messy kiss.
Tony muffles a tiny groan of his own and shuts his eyes more tightly, as if by doing so, he can shut out the sound. All he can think of now is Their refractory period is almost at zero. It does not exist. Damn Asgardians and their non-existent refractory periods. Damn them.
Damn them all.
~
By the time the sun rises, Thor and Loki are, not surprisingly, in good spirits. Bruce, having taken the last watch, remains his usual nonchalant self.
Tony and Steve rub at eyes sore from too much not-sleep and free-per-view porn.
It’s probably why it takes Tony a moment to process the strange, vaguely amphibious grey bodies that Loki and Thor toss down at their feet.
“What are these?” he asks, his tongue feeling slow and thick in his mouth. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows, but this is still surprisingly fast; he hadn’t expected to find the enemy until later tonight. Or even the next day.
“They are part of a race of shapeshifters,” Loki says. “We caught them trying to emulate our forms this morning, having worn out their human counterparts. After interrogation, it appears that the flattening of the fields was an early attempt at terraforming regions of Midgard to make it more habitable for their kind.”
Thor nods in agreement. “We should take them back to S.H.I.E.L.D. to determine if any more of their kind will be sent, and if so, when. And how many more.”
“Wait a minute—you speak their language?” Tony asks, incredulous. One of the bodies on the ground twitches at him, a tendril of oozing grey and Tony takes a half-step back. “Aren’t they from another world or something?”
Loki raises a brow, gracing him with an expression that speaks volumes of what he thinks of Tony’s intellect. “We interrogated them in the Allspeak, in the same manner we communicate with you.”
There’s a long silence before Steve goes, “So. So…maybe that wasn’t you in the loft?” He sounds almost hopeful.
Tony flicks a glance to Steve. He’s onto something here; if the two they thought were Thor and Loki were actually the shapeshifters, then that bizarre tryst in the barn loft would make sense. But no—something doesn’t add up. Both Thor and Loki said they had found the aliens at sunrise. There’s also the fact that, as talented as the shapeshifters might be, there’s no way they could emulate the unique blend of animosity and affection these two have developed from a millennium together.
Thor clinches it when he says, “Loki and I were in the loft all night.” He looks confused.
Steve turns the most amusing shade of red, and sputters while Tony sighs. He’s going to have to break it to Steve gently, and later, that their two resident gods are not only brothers (adoptive though they may be), but also, yes, boning each other.
Bruce, who hasn’t said a word until now, blinks owlishly from behind his glasses. “No. I’m not convinced. I think you’re the shapeshifters.” He squares his shoulders, though Tony’s not sure how much use his Doctor Banner persona will be here without the Hulk, and points at Loki. “I heard you call him brother,” he accuses.
As if something Loki moaned in the throes of passion could somehow be used as proof.
Tony winces internally, before making two realizations: one, Bruce was actually awake when all that Thor/ Loki brother-stuff went down, and two, now both Loki and Thor will know the three of them lay there listening and possibly watching them while they—
“No,” Loki all but hisses, “I would never.” He glares at Thor. It doesn’t take an Asgardian or a genius to figure out his incredulous expression, the one that says I thought you said they were asleep. When Thor gives him a look like a kicked puppy, Loki amends quickly, “Perhaps under…special circumstances.”
Like when you’re under Thor, Tony nearly says, but this isn’t a fire he wants to add fuel to, either way.
Thor, bless him, still manages to smile at the rest of them. “My friends,” he says, with what Tony labels ‘most awkward grin in the Avengers’ shared history’, “could we not focus on the fact that though this enemy has been vanquished, we must find out how many still remain?”
The others sigh, Loki still glares daggers at Thor, and together, they lift and transport the unknown life forms to the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility.
That is, Tony, Steve and Bruce do, loading the near-corpses into the van; Loki just swans off and wraps his arms around his brother’s neck while Thor takes off with Mjölnir into the sky. Tony’s pretty sure he heard Loki murmur, “Take me home, brotherrr,” his voice low and sultry in Thor’s ear, just before they took off.
Somewhere in the distance, a soft rumble of thunder follows.
Tony looks up; there are, oddly enough, no clouds in the sky. “Seeing as how Thor’s the god of thunder and all,” he starts, “do you think that’s him and Loki getting—”
“I’d prefer not to think about that,” Bruce says quietly. He thumbs the car key into the ignition.
No one says a word on the way back, even when the light, drizzling rain that’s started turns into a torrential downpour.
~
The next time Fury assigns Tony on a mission to work with Thor and Loki again, Tony puts his foot down.
“No. Nuh-uh. No way am I working with those two again. Thor, maybe. But not Thor and Loki.”
Steve, who’s also been assigned to this mission, flushes a dark red and seconds the motion.
Fury crosses his arms, unimpressed. “Either one of you want to tell me what the problem is?”
“They, uh,” Steve offers helplessly, and looks to Tony for a leg to stand on.
“They have sex,” Tony says frankly. “Lots of it. During the mission, after the mission. Even after they beat up some baddies. Maybe it’s a celebratory thing, I don’t know. But they—”
“They get the job done,” snaps Fury. “While the rest of you were sleeping, they caught those things that have been lurking in the fields.”
“With all due respect, sir,” starts Steve, “we would have—”
Fury fixes him with a glare that brooks no argument. With its bulging and pulsing, the spider web of veins over his missing eye seems almost sentient. Like a veiny eyepatch-monster, ready to leap off his face and kill someone.
Tony marches them both out of there post-haste, because between two amorous Asgardians and one furious Director, it’s a sure bet on which one’s the better choice.
~
“It is,” Loki says later, as the four of them huddle behind a car, hiding from an alpha-male version of the aliens they interrogated earlier.
Just investigate, the threat will be contained, Fury had said. What he hadn’t said was that Tony, Steve, Thor and Loki were the containment team.
“What is?” asks Tony.
“It is a celebratory thing,” Loki says cheekily. “And a preparatory thing.” He smiles, sharp and unabashed. “A thing for all occasions.”
Tony groans. “You were listening?” A car, the crushed husk of what used to be a canary-yellow Hummer, hurtles overhead, dashing debris of sparking wires and keening metal scant feet away.
“Guys? I think we have some more pressing concerns right now,” Steve says flatly, as the grey creature tramples another few cars underfoot. A nightmarish monster-truck dominating an imaginary derby.
Loki casts a seemingly coy glance Thor’s way.
“Enough of this!” Thor growls. He leaps out from behind the car, drags Steve and Tony into a three-pronged attack formation, and they take out the behemoth of a creature in almost no time at all.
“Well,” Steve says after, dusting himself off, “I won’t say that was easy, but it looks like Thor can really get going when he puts his mind to it.”
There are some light scratches on his shield and a trail of claw marks along his upper torso, but neither of them are worse for the wear. Tony just counts himself lucky that his suit’s still mostly intact, despite the sparks shooting out from his arm.
“Speaking of Thor, where is he?” asks Steve. “We should probably report back on the situation here.”
A series of soft, pleasured cries emanate from a nearby alleyway, and Tony fights the urge to roll his eyes. “Celebrating,” he deadpans. “Where else?”
~
When Tony’s forced to retire the Mark VII due to what he calls ‘irreconcilable damages’, he incorporates a new feature into the next suit he builds.
“These panels take into account sound levels in the surrounding environment and filter them accordingly,” Tony says proudly, turning and showing off the helmet in his hands to Steve.
He doesn’t need to share the panels’ express purpose; everyone already knows.
“What about me?” asks Steve. “I don’t have anything like your Iron Man suit.”
“Good question,” Tony replies. He rummages through the odds and ends of his worktable and tosses Steve a plastic packet. “Here’s the answer.”
“Earplugs?” Steve raises a brow as he examines the two orange foam bits. “I guess they are pretty cost-effective.”
“Cheap, replaceable, and wonderful,” assures Tony. “Best of all, you won’t have to accidentally hear Thor and Loki trying to make babies.” He finds himself enjoying the charming flush that spreads across Steve’s cheeks at that.
“I did not think that was even possible,” says a voice from behind them, thoughtful. “Is it, brother?”
Shit, Tony realizes; somehow Thor and Loki have wormed their way curiously into his workshop and overheard. “Uh, no. Bad idea,” Tony says quickly. “This Avengers tower? No babysitters. Or daycare services. And correct me if I’m wrong, but—” he jabs a finger in their direction, “—aren’t you both men?”
Much to Tony’s chagrin, Loki only smirks and looks to Thor. “It hardly means we cannot try,” he says, winding his fingers subtly around Thor’s waist.
Thor looks delighted at this prospect (poor guy doesn’t need much to make him happy; even a kind word from Loki lights him up like the Rockefeller on Christmas), beaming and slinging an automatic arm around Loki’s shoulders.
Tony shoves his face into his hands. Out of the frying pan, he thinks.
“And into the fire,” Steve says, completing the thought. He eyes Thor and Loki with a new sort of caution. As if at any moment a being might spring full-grown from either one of them.
They’re gods too; it just might happen.
“What fire?” Thor inquires, puzzled. When no conflagration is forthcoming, he shrugs and turns to Loki with his hundred-watt smile, the one that crinkles his eyes at the corners and shines brightest only when he’s with his brother. “When do we start?”
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Date: 2013-08-11 11:40 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-08-12 03:06 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2014-04-01 10:11 am (UTC)From:Love your happy writing. Makes me smile on a dull day.
xx.
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Date: 2014-04-09 12:03 am (UTC)From:Glad you enjoy the writing!
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Date: 2014-04-09 01:54 pm (UTC)From: