Part 1 - Chp 11
“When did I agree to not have my armour again?” Tony asks.
“I thought you said this sounds good?” Loki hisses and yeah, okay, maybe Tony should have asked for some more clarification.
“It did! You were happy! Everything sounded happy!”
Loki growls, yanking Tony around the corner of the hallway. There’s a spray of gunfire that is definitely way too close to Tony’s not armoured flesh, and then there’s some screaming as Loki leans around and makes a complicated gesture with his hand.
“Do I want to know?” Tony asks.
“No,” Loki says with a smile.
“Right, then I’m not asking. You’re sure they’re in this building?”
“Yes.” A pause. “At least Barton.”
“Loki—”
“I am aware,” Loki interrupts. “I do not know Romanoff half so well to find her. We best hope she is with Barton, else I’ll bleed him when we find him to find her.”
“We aren’t trying to kill them!”
“It’s only a little,” Loki says. He grabs a surprisingly intact gun (if only due to how not intact the owner currently is) as they go back down the hallway and shoves it at Tony. “Barton is useful.”
***
“I do not understand--he’s here.” Loki looks about two seconds from stomping his foot or stabbing Tony for sheer want of stabbing someone. Tony takes a careful step back out of his reach just to be safe.
“Look, I don’t know how you’re doing this, but maybe you—”
“I am not wrong!”
“Okay, okay,” Tony says, trying to remember what Barton said about soothing a stressed out Loki. He’s not coming up with much, but there’s probably backup on the way soon that he does not want to still be here for. “Look, why don’t we regroup? He’s clearly still alive, we don’t have to go far, but this isn’t working.”
Loki doesn’t say anything, eyes tracing the ground as he turns, focused on things Tony can’t see. He looks up at Tony, opens his mouth, and then whatever he was going to say is drowned out by a rumble of thunder that makes the walls shudder.
“Huh,” Tony says, “I don’t remember there being a storm outside.” He glances at Loki, but Loki’s frozen with an honest panic in his face, like maybe if he doesn’t move nothing will happen. “Loki?”
Loki darts towards him, an arm wrapping around his middle, then everything goes up in chaos. He can hear the building collapsing in, gets the weightless sensation of falling, grabs Loki’s arm on instinct before he’s landing on something squishy and hard and he really really hopes he did not just land on a corpse.
Then Loki is yanked away and Tony can’t get his eyes open fast enough, to try and follow him, because no, that’s not okay, except he definitely isn’t going to be getting up as fast as he wants--getting tangled up in Barton’s limbs as he tries to get up.
“Hey, I found Barton.”
“Fuck you and get your fat ass off of me already,” Barton spits, trying to get out from under Tony. “Fuck—”
Which is about all the warning Tony gets before Loki is landing on top of them both.
Loki is already up and on his feet, a spear in hand Tony doesn’t remember him having with a wicked blade and light gleaming the same blue of Tony’s reactor. Once Tony’s managed to push himself off Barton and situate himself still firmly behind Loki--giving Barton a helping hand along the way since Tony did land on him--he notices that Loki isn’t pointing it at the threat. He’s holding it ready, but otherwise his stance is all poise and calm.
“Thor,” Loki sneers. “What a pleasant surprise.”