Adult-FanFiction.org : Marvel 'Verse

Trickster's Gambit	By : Andartha Category: Marvel Verse Movies > Avengers, The Views: 2529 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own the Avengers. They belong to Marvel. Like all the other fans, I only get to play with them a bit, in an entirley non-profit kind of way.

Chapter List
- 1-Burned
- 2-Stolen
- 3-Split
- 4-Bound
- 5-Hunted
- 6-Fallen & Cracked
- 7-calmed
- 8-Settled
- 9-Sparked
- 10-Sneaked
- 11-Pranked
- 10
- 11
He’s yawning as he enters the stable.
Sleep has become much less appealing than exploring other worlds, Midgard specifically, and so he’s not been resting as much as he should.
Still, it’s not as if he has to be really awake for such a mundane task as milking goats.
Tjalar and Eistla have gone off this morn, before dawn, some kind of Council Meeting, and Meara has snuck off to meet Aegir, the young man who gave her that beautifully carved spoon the other day at the market, to go swimming.
He chuckles quietly to himself. Well, probably not JUST swimming.
He quickly milks and feeds the goats and then makes himself comfortable on the bales of moss in the back. Yawning widely yet again, he unwraps a bundle with a bit of bread and cheese that he brought along and starts munching. There’s also a chipped mug he brought from the kitchen. Now, filled with some of the fresh warm milk, it provides much welcome sweetness between bites of bread.
Once his hunger is sated, he snuggles into the velvety caress of the moss-bales, stretching languidly for a minute to get all those tiny kinks out of his muscles that being still tired has put there.

Agent Barton drinks coffee when he’s tired. The drink looks like a cross between smoking coal made liquid and manticore ichor and why anyone would want to consume something that looks like it could char a man’s tongue right out of his mouth is beyond him.
Loki is still debating whether or not to let the Tesseract give him a taste.
Maybe he should go with Selvig’s coffee first. The man adds milk, turning the inky liquid into something that has a velvety, light-brown colour and which looks moderately more palatable.

While he nibbles at his bread, he sends his thoughts out along the link, to the Tesseract. She purrs like a cat as he arrives at her side and creates a shade. One of the monitors across the hall starts beeping and one of the scientists hurries over to it and frantically begins taking notes on his Tablet, glancing up every so often to check the read-out on the monitor.
Neither Barton nor Selvig seem to be around.
A quick enquiry with Tessa yields the information that the good doctor is taking his rest and sleeping in his rooms and that Agent Barton is in his quarters too, but that he’s awake.
It’s a roll of the dice that he can work with.
Selvig’s calculations are coming along nicely and while they are still far from finding the key that will allow them to open portals, they certainly have come far in discovering what the lock looks like and what will trigger it. They’re in no hurry, so there’s no need to wake the good doctor.
He still needs to get more familiar with this underground fortress first, with the people working in it, with this organization, this….SHIELD. And of course with Agent Barton himself.
His face splits in the anticipatory grin of a kid that has been promised candied apples for desert.
Looks like he will be joining the Archer for his rounds.
Perfect.
It took a try or two to find out how best to do this kind of thing, with the Archer being as sensitive to his presence as he is.
The first time he tried walking beside Agent Barton, just so he could watch his face, the results were somewhat unsatisfactory.
Walking side-by-side with the Archer, he was still within the mortal’s visual field....something that left Agent Barton frowning, scowling and narrowing his eyes in a way that promised a lot of unpleasantness for whoever or whatever the mysterious source of his irritation was....and that just wouldn’t do.
First of all, Barton had proven himself not only of keenest sight by picking up on Loki’s presence, but when he had spent a whole hour going over the security footage of himself walking the corridors and cross-referencing it with the read-outs of the scanners, all in an attempt to find the cause for his unease, he had also made proof of a mistrust that ran deeper than Yggdrasil’s roots.
Later on, he’d overheard Barton on one of those small speaking devices that Loki now knew to call “phone”, giving a status report to his superior, Director Fury, the one-eyed warrior in black who had recruited Selvig.
The conversation had made it painfully clear that Loki could not really afford to attract Barton’s attention, for the Archer had mentioned that even as he had no evidence to support his suspicions, he would call in reinforcements if he came to the conclusion that something was truly amiss….and this would make stealing the Tesseract infinitely more difficult.
Loki is but one man, and even if he is an adept sorcerer and a warrior of no mean skill…it does not change the fact that he is about to take on an entire fortress teeming with soldiers.
If, by any mishap, he cannot steal the Tesseract away with stealth, he will have to use force…and even though he can deflect the projectiles of their weapons, sooner or later it will tire him out and they would defeat him.
He would have failed….and that is something he cannot afford to do.
The Tesseract is the ONE thing that is truly his. His heritage. His legacy.
The thought that he might somehow fail to recover it is enough to make his guts writhe like they were attempting to crawl out of his chest and it sends bitter bile flooding his mouth.
Returning to Asgard and spending the measly rest of his existence being eaten alive by the steady stream of poisonous scorn that his former peers would shower upon him there would be a kinder fate than living with the failure to recover the Tesseract.
He wants both the Tesseract AND the Archer…but if he had to choose between the two, he would gladly sacrifice the latter and think the price a small one.
However….he DOES hope to have his cake and eat it too, and if he does nothing untoward to alert the good Agent before it is time, chances are his wish will come true.

The second reason why he has to tread carefully with the mortal is that, if he can woo the man into following him….maybe by letting Agent Barton chase him all the way back to Jotunheim once he has stolen the Tesseract…then sooner or later, the Archer will realize that Loki had spied on him before acquiring the cube, for the mortal is no fool.
And if that time of reconnaissance iss something that the Archer rememberes with anger and frustration, then this would taint all and any overtures that Loki made towards him.
Not a good start if you wanted to tumble someone.
So…for the time being, he needs to observe, without being overly noticed, and if the Archer did somehow perceive a foreign presence within the fortress which he was set to guard, he should not, in any way, think of it as a nuisance or a threat.
The first step towards the solution of the challenges he faced was the simplest.
He no longer walked side-by-side with the archer, but instead a few lengths behind him.
Near enough to overhear any conversation, but far enough to be out of the range of notice. And if the Agent turned his head a bit, he’d slip behind a corner, another guard or a few crates to stay outside of the Archer’s range of perception.
When Loki could still see Agent Barton’s face while he followed him, he’d learned and memorized the way the Archer’s eyes crinkled just the tiniest bit when he was amused, but when laughing outright would have been unprofessional….the way the Archer smiled indulgently and narrowed his eyes dangerously when someone was trying to hood-wink him….the way his brow knitted just a bit in his otherwise impassive face when he was out at the shooting-range, practicing his art.
Now that he had taken to walking behind the Archer, he minutely catalogued the cadences of the Agent’s voice, the way it was edged, sharp as freshly broken ice, when he thought one of his subordinates was slacking, the gravelly smoothness of well-worn pebbles it held when talking to a shy secretary, the cutting sarcasm it carried when he had to deal with Selvig, with whom he traded verbal pot-shots whenever they had to talk for longer than half a minute.
It is not difficult to tell from which source that last brand of strife is born.
Selvig might be the top dog amongst his pack of scientists and his interactions with his assistants and colleagues is easy-going and infused with wry humour…but whenever he interacts with any of the military personnel, his shoulders grow tense and his speech is marked by clipped curtness.
Especially when Barton was in the room, even when he was not interacting with the doctor, Selvig, who was usually too engrossed in his work to notice much of anything, would pause every so often to cast a furtive glance in the Agent’s direction, as if worried that Barton was about to shoot him.
When one of the scientists, a buxom brunette, had whispered to one of her colleagues that she thought that Barton was cute, and Selvig had overheard, he had interrupted the conversation sharply to tell the dark-haired woman not to get involved with the Agent because Barton was a killer who had blood on his hands.
What was it that Selvig had said, the first time he had been brought into the depths of the compound? “I was thinking that you had taken me down here to kill me.”
It would seem that even though Selvig is now working for the people he feared, his worry has not alleviated by much….and that Selvig deals with the prime focus of that anxiety, Agent Barton, by becoming snippy with him.
Agent Barton however shows little patience for such maidenly jitters and he returns Selvig’s waspish favours, giving as good as gets.
What might the Archer’s tone be like if he were not needled by one who fears him, but gently teased by one who wants him?
Oh….does he ever intend to find out.
But first he has unwitting allies to guide, a way to find, opponents to spy on…one of which is, as of yet, Agent Barton.
A short inquiry with Tessa yields the information that Agent Barton is in his quarters, a place that the Archer pays brief visits to, mainly to rest.
Since the Agent is awake, it is likely that he will emerge from his room in just a short while, but Loki finds that he does not have the patience to wait.
A few steps down the hall take him to the Archer's room. He's followed the Agent around quite a bit and this is one of the places he ended up in by doing so.
The first time he entered the sparsely furnished room, he started wondering if Barton had been assigned to this post as some kind of punishment. The place is clean, but the walls are as bare as those of a cave and what little furniture there is, is scuffed and scratched by what seems to be centuries of use.
The pigs in Asgard are better stabled than this.
However, even as the Archer might glare at the leaky faucet of the washbasin, he does not wince when the bed squeaks beneath him as he sits nor does he frown when the doors of his locker require a bit of force to be properly shut.
By now, Loki knows the extent of Agent Barton's responsibilities and the powers that have been conferred to him, so he is aware that this maltreatment of an honoured warrior is not meant as punishment.
It still sets his teeth on edge regardless and even as the Archer remains indifferent, Loki finds himself glaring at the rickety furniture, thinking how much more fitting the Archer would be housed in a suite at the top of a spiralling tower, with huge windows that afford a roundabout view of the lands below, with furniture carved out of golden oak and a bed bedecked with blankets of the finest wool.
But even as he regards the room with disdain, observing how indifferent the Archer accepts the simple and worn furnishings lets Loki breathe easier.
After all, he is no longer a prince of Asgard.
He no longer has anything to offer in the way of worldly treasures or in the way of prestige or fame…he cannot offer the kind of abode that would do the Archer justice.
These days he is little more than a farmhand….an occasional goatherd and a hunter. He’s getting to be a passable carpenter and he’s learned how to make cheese without ruining it.
If Barton does not mind the humble quarters he has been assigned, then maybe he won’t mind either that the one who would lure him from his post is of rather humble standing too.
And….there might be other things he can offer Agent Barton.

….

As the days pass, he catches himself more than once, trying to picture what his life were like if he had the Archer by his side and the Tesseract in his possession.
The imagined details of a shared future come as easily as snow melting in the sunshine.
The Archer practices faithfully at the range each day, face as calm and concentrated as that of Meara when she chops wood.
The monotony of practice is interrupted one day though, when another Agent, senior to Barton and only passing through, something to do with documents having to be dropped off in person, makes a smart-aleck remark about archery being hopelessly outdated.
Loki instantly wishes he could curse the gor-bellied lout with warts, but he is constrained to watch from the sidelines, hands tied by his lack of magic while but a shade in this realm and by the need to remain undiscovered.
He wouldn’t have needed to fash himself.
In the blink of an eye, the Archer’s calm concentration switches places with a roguish grin as the Archer turns, quick as a stooping hawk, and looses an arrow that pins the other Agent to the wall by the sleeve of his jacket.
“Can’t do that with a gun”, the Archer drawls, voice dry as tinder, as he saunters calmly over to retrieve his arrow.
As the Archer returns to his shooting practice, the man who had mocked him is left behind, pale as plaster and open-mouthed like a simpleton and Loki has to bite his lips to keep himself from snickering at the sight.
After witnessing that particular incident, it had become easy as breathing to picture the Archer perched high up in one of the firs along one of the larger leas, a wicked glint in his eyes, bow ready to take out the wild boars that Loki and Tjalar flushed up for him.
Loki owns a few furs by now, the result of his hunts with Tjalar, and especially the white rabbit fur would make nice warm clothing to keep the Archer from feeling the cold of Jotunheim as well as serving as excellent camouflage.
Also, once Loki has reclaimed the Tesseract, there will be worlds begging to be travelled, secrets to be discovered….adventures to be had.
For a start, wouldn’t it be something to get Jotunheim’s fur and leather trade with the other worlds going again?
They could sell thick, scaly wyrm skins to the dwarves who are ever in need of solid leathers to be part of the armour they craft.
They could sell doe leather, thin and supple as silk, to the elves of Alfheim.
And trade can be dangerous, with brigands and thieves and dishonest merchants trying to despoil you of your hard-earned fortune, meagre though it be.
What gleeful hilarity would ensue if they could send those would-be-robbers packing, pricked by arrows and befuddled by magic?
It is conceivable that the Archer might be amenable to such ventures.
After all, he has yet to see the Archer sit idle. Even in the short periods of time where he is not on active duty, with his second, McCay, being in command, the Archer might prowl the compound, looking for trouble, restless like a bird of prey, hooded and jessed, waiting for the moment where it can fly free.
Loki’s been private to a moment or two where the Agent DID find a problem that warranted his attention and it left him wishing for more of the same.
There was that one time where Barton checked up on one of the guards who manned a surveillance unit, the dark room illuminated by the dozens of flickering monitors…and the guard peacefully snoozing in his chair.
Barton does not wake the man up. He does not shout. He does not drag the man off to be flogged, as the Armsmaster in Asgard would have done with any of his guards that he caught sleeping while on duty.
Instead, Barton sneaks out of the room, quiet as a cat, closing the door behind him without a sound.
Then he jogs off to sick bay, where hails one of the medics and asks for a strong laxative. The man doesn’t even bat an eyelash as he hands Agent Barton a small brown bottle with liquid and he carefully answers all questions as Barton inquires about dosage, side effects and the time it takes for the drug to work.
Loki starts to suspect where this might be going and by the Nine mothers of Heimdall, the Archer is sorely testing his restraint, because for a moment, he needs to cover his mouth with both hands to stop a chuckle from escaping.
Barton’s next stop is the office section, the part where people meet for small breaks to gossip like magpies and, as they say, “coffee up”.
The Archer takes one of the mugs out of the cupboards, pours a good measure coffee into it, drops in a few spoons of sugar too, waits for the coffee to cool a bit, and then adds a liberal dose of the laxative.
After that, he wanders over to the nearby cubicles, where a bunch of young men and women stare at screens and tap away at keyboards. He calls a pretty young blonde with curly hair over to him.
“Hey, Katie.”
“Agent Barton.” The girl’s eyes turn the size of saucers as she approaches and her voice is hardly above a mouses’ squeak.
Barton smiles shyly, like a small boy who has been assigned to go berry picking with a much older girl that he likes. He even drops his gaze to the floor for a moment and scratches himself behind one ear, as if he’s not sure what to do with his hands.
“Uhm…yeah….well, I have bit of a problem, and I was wondering if you could maybe help me with it.”
Loki’s not sure which impulse is the one that’s the hardest to supress: the one to giggle out loud, the one to strangle the secretary as she smiles at the Archer as if he were a tasty sweetmeat or the one to grab Barton’s wayward hand and rain butterfly kisses down on the Archer’s nose and mouth until he kisses him back. He settles for holding himself still, silently laughing, as he watches the play unfold.
The blonde secretary straightens, standing up a bit taller than she had before and the intensity of her smile increases until it burns like a small sun.
“Certainly, Agent Barton. Whatever you need of me.”
“Well Katie, you see, Agent Monahan, who’s currently manning the surveillance room down the hall….Pete’s had it rough lately, and I’m afraid he’s fallen asleep on duty, and well….I should be rippin’ the guy a new one for it, but I don’t really want to be that hard on him, I mean, he’s got a tough job and nobody can be on the top of his game all the time….”
Barton looks up at the young women, from underneath his lashes, his eyes moist pools of quiet pleading, like a puppy asking to be petted.
The blonde secretary nods enthusiastically, her curls bouncing on her shoulders.
“How can I help you?”
“Well, I got him a cup of coffee, to help him stay awake…but I can’t go in there. I’m his superior, and if I’m the one to wake him, all official-like, then there’ll have to be consequences. But I know you kinda like him…and he likes you….so maybe you could go in there, wake him and ask him to drink this coffee so he can stay awake and alert for the rest of his shift? So we can book this as no harm, no foul, with none of the higher-ups the wiser?”
The blonde takes the cup that Barton holds out to her, beaming beatifically at him as if he was some kind of hero stepped down from Valhalla, and then hustles down the corridor.
Agent Barton grins like Sif would when someone told her she couldn’t do something because she was a girl, and walks down a hallway to the left, where the latrines are.
He leans casually against the wall, right beside the door to the men’s room and activates the comm-link in his ear, opening a channel to his second.
“McCay?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Do me favour, reduce the security clearance for Katie Sheperd from the secretarial pool by two levels. She’s far too gullible to be working where she is and she has no idea how seriously we take security around here. Also check if she’s slipped any kind of information about our operation here to anybody else yet, friends, family, online acquaintances. Hell, check if she’s posted anything to facebook or twitter. The other thing I need you to do is to demote Peter Monahan from security. Guy’s been falling asleep on duty. I want him doing perimeter checks from now on, teamed up with Agent Patel. Patel’s an old, reliable hand and Monahan damn well better not fall asleep while walking. By the way, get someone ready to take over Monahan’s post. The guy will be clocking out unexpectedly in a few.”
McCay can be heard chuckling over the comm and the Archer matches the man’s mirth with a shit-eating grin that’s like watching a shooting-star skid over the night-sky: bright, lovely beyond words and something you can make a wish on. Loki finds himself leaning against the wall too, because with knees that feel like putty, how can he hope to remain upright if he does not?
The Archer settles in to wait, passing the time by checking messages on his phone.
He’s responded to twelve short messages and queries when hurried footsteps sound along the halls and Agent Monahan, face pale and sweaty, walking as if he were trying to hold an egg with his thighs while he moves, turns around the corner. He stops abruptly as he sees Agent Barton, face going white as chalk and a noise escaping him that sounds like someone was trying to strangle a squirrel, all high-pitched distress.
Monahan might have stood there frozen for all eternity, but then he farts loudly, squirms and with a short and puffing “Sir” hastens past his superior, through the door that leads to the latrines.
The noises that emerge from the room afterwards are anything but pretty, a cacophony of blurts and gurgles that sound like broken, clogged pipes under too much pressure, the whole thing underscored with liberal expletives that would have made a sailor blush.
Agent Barton pushes off from the wall and saunters down the corridor with a smug smile . Loki follows behind, muffling his own laughter by biting his hand until his teeth break skin. Even despite this, his shoulders are shaking hard with unvoiced laughter.
The Archer pauses, looks back as if sensing something amiss, and Loki slides behind an office cupboard to conceal himself, almost stumbling because his feet don’t quite obey him as he pictures the Archer and himself in another time and another place, free to lean on each other’s shoulders as they laugh until both of them are gasping for air.
Glancing around the corner, he sees the Archer chuckle, shake his head and then move on.
Slightly breathless, hand aching and heart light, Loki follows him.
It would seem that the Archer might be well matched with the god of mischief.
…
Still sporting a smile a mile wide as he remembers, he stops in front of the door to Agent Barton's room.
It is closed, as expected.
Huffing an exasperated sigh, he prepares himself to go through.
His shade might not be able to interact with physical objects but still, moving through them makes him feel as if an army of fire-ants crawled all over him.
In the greater scheme of things though, it has yielded interesting enough information before, so it is worth the trouble.
Once, he’d found Agent Barton seated at the rickety table, disassembling, cleaning and re-assembling his firearms.
…
Loki settles on the bed behind the Agent and, watching the Agent work, he learns about the projectile weaponry that mortals use: there are different models and makes, handguns like the Colt M1911 or the CZ75 and sniper rifles such as the M24. The shots they can fire are limited. Seven for the Colt, sixteen for the CZ75 and ten for the M24. They are loaded using clips filled with bullets and, most interestingly, they might malfunction and jam for a variety of reasons, such as dirt in the chamber.
The last tidbit of information might prove useful, if he can create a spell that will jam those guns….maybe a simple transportation spell using a few grains of sand….but it would have to have something to hone in on….Even nastier if he can figure out a way to make the bullets explode while still in the magazine, but yet again, that would require some kind of mark to direct the spell to the bullets and the bullets alone….
He will have to think about this.
Later, he follows the mortal to the firing range, where he discovers that in any hands but those of Agent Barton, guns are faster and easier to fire than a bow, their use requiring less strength as well and their reach being longer.
Even a child could pull a gun’s trigger and kill a man.
However, as guns require little skill or training to use and even less strength or courage, this allows any common thug to use one, almost without effort. With such power accessible to those that would use it for darker purposes, it’s a wonder that midgardian civilisation has not completely crumbled into the wastes of barbarity by now.
…
Another time when he’d sought out the Archer in his rooms, Barton had been sitting on his bed, back leaned against the wall, going through some files.
…
Loki quietly slips on top of the locker, which is neither broad nor long enough to allow him to lie down comfortably on it, so he sits, legs dangling down the front.
He has to hunch down a bit, because otherwise, he would bump his head against the low ceiling, but he doesn’t mind leaning forward, balancing precariously on the edge. It gives him an excellent view from above of the reports Agent Barton is reading…and of Agent Barton.
The sandy blond head below is bent over reports that speak of packages delivered, contaminated with some kind of sickness, of conmen waylaying panel trucks, so they might impersonate the delivery-people, of hoodlums planning to abduct the loved ones of people who work here.
The package had been caught in the post-room, since it was standard procedure to scan the incoming mail for all kinds of things, but Barton dwells on the issue for a few moments, brows furrowed, then takes up his tablet and searches the SHIELD database for a while, after which he adds another analysis to be run on the incoming mail with a few swift strokes of his pen.
Concerning the conmen that had tried to waylay the truck….Agent Barton had had that group pegged as people who were likely to try something of the sort and so he had had one of his people strike up a romantic relationship with one of the crooks. Pillow talk has foiled more than one clever plan, a lesson those incompetents obviously had missed.
SHIELD had been amply forewarned and when the heist went down, the panel truck had been manned with well-armed Agents and a small grin, sharp as a knife, cuts across the Archer’s face as he reads about the would-be marauders finding themselves caught in their own trap.
With the hoodlums that had tried to abduct the mother of one of the head-secretaries, things had turned a bit hairier. The men had pulled her into a van while she was shopping, that the woman had escaped with no more than a few scrapes and a bit of a fright was only thanks to a tracking device that all who were somehow related to SHIELD were offered (even if the relation was only by proxy), some careful monitoring of the woman’s activities by an attentive Agent in surveillance and to the speedy reaction of the rescue team that Barton had sent out and coordinated.
Yet, even though no one but the thugs got seriously hurt, Barton snarls like a dog that had its’ tail trod upon and jots down a few questions that will need to be discussed with Director Fury in order to find a way to better address such issues, the Archer’s stylus clicking harshly on the tablet, like knocked-out teeth falling to the ground.
...
As he still wonders what will await him this time, his shade passes through the door, the wood-like material it is made from hardly posing an obstacle, especially since it is not much thicker than one of Loki’s fingers.
Still, he shakes himself like a wet dog once he has passed through, trying to get rid of the itching tingle that jitters throughout his whole body, his eyes darting furtively around the room like hunting bats. After all, one can only keep out of sight if one knows the exact position of the one likely to be watching.
At first sight, the room is….empty.
However, there is a small, open doorway at the back that leads to a bath and the sound of water running can be heard.
Loki swallows. Hard. This….he hadn’t thought of.
As if they had a will of his own and his mind had none, his feet drag him towards the entrance of the room, through which the seat of the privy can be seen, the seat covered with a towel on which one of Agent Barton’s wicked throwing knives is placed.
Should an attacker break into the room’s front door, there would be enough time for Agent Barton to make a lunge for the weapon, throw it at the attacker and kill him with it, then grab his bow or one of the guns from the locker in the room proper in order to deal with any other aggressors.
Loki has known his father’s elite guards to be less careful than that while taking care of their ablutions.
He carefully squeezes himself beside the head of the bed and peeks around the corner of the door-frame.
To the right, a bit to the back of the bathroom, there is a shower head set into the ceiling, with a drain on the floor.
Barton has wedged himself into the corner where the shower is located, his back leaning against the walls, his feet firmly planted on the ground about an arm’s length away from it. He is slightly hunched over, with his head thrown back, eyes squeezed shut as if in pain, lips slightly open, panting hard, one hand braced flat against the wall, the other wrapped firmly around his cock, jerking up and down in a fast, irregular rhythm.
It is a good thing that Loki’s real body, back in the barn on Jotunheim, does not wear pants but a loose leather kilt, for all of a sudden, pants would be far too tight. The sight of Agent Barton has made him grow painfully hard in less than a heartbeat and he has to fight to breathe, because for all that he knows, the Sylphs, incarnations of all things light and beautiful, might just as well have stolen the air from his lungs.
Thankfully, the Agent’s eyes are closed, because even if his life depended on it, Loki could not move right now to escape the hawk’s gaze.
The shower is on and there’s a slight haze in the room, broken by the harsh fluorescent light above. The Archer’s legs are under the centre of the jet of water.
His broad chest, the nipples hard and dusky, gets hit by the spray and water droplets course over the Archer’s skin, glistening in the stark bright light of the lamp above like liquid crystals.
Almost against his will, Loki thinks about licking those droplets off and of following the little rivulets of water down to where they pool in the Archer’s groin. He has to clench his teeth so hard his jaw hurts, but there is no other way to stifle the moan that threatens to escape him.
Barton’s movements slow down. His face scrunches up and he bites his lip. He speeds up again, exhaling sharply. Slows down. Snarls and speeds up again. Slows.
Mutters to himself.
“Damn.”
And Loki can’t help a lop-sided grin from spreading on his face, half amusement and half sympathy.
Now isn’t that familiar.
Feeling yourself tense as you come close to the edge, but whatever you’re doing doesn’t seem good enough to give you that final little push, so you start switching around, but nothing helps…because elsewhere, your thoughts are racing a mile a minute, dwelling on all the million little things that are NOT going your way right now and you can’t get them to shut up long enough to get off.
And in the end, you give up, because things are going nowhere and you find yourself under worse strain than before, all coiled up inside, in a bad mood that you can’t shake for ages.
Agent Barton’s not giving up yet though, because he takes a deep, shuddering breath, briefly dips his head and starts up again, with long, easy strokes, his grip light. He runs his thumb over the tip of his glans in slow circles, brow furrowed, upper lip curled back on one side, teeth showing.
It’s the most distracted Loki has ever seen the Archer, eyes closed tight, mind unfocused and slightly dazed….it is a situation that offers….opportunities.
At a very low risk.
An acceptable risk.
And wasn’t one of his stated goals to have the Archer remember being spied on with fondness?
His lips curves in a mischievous smile and, his heart pounding like rain during a summer storm, his feet carry him across the room, past the toilet, to the side of his Archer.
He crouches in the narrow space beside him, his back to the door, his head at one height with the mortal’s chest. He looks up, fixes his sight on the man’s face, his cock aching and twitching anew each time Barton gasps, close to coming but never close enough.
The way Barton’s head is thrown back, if he opens his eyes, the first thing he will see won’t be Loki, it will be the ceiling. It will give Loki time to dispel his shade and make good his escape before the little hawk regains his focus.
And maybe, just maybe the Archer is too far gone to distinguish between what his ears tell him and what his fevered mind and body supply.
He will have to try it.
An acceptable risk.
He leans in to let his breath ghost over the Agent’s nipples and is rewarded by seeing them tighten up even further.
The Archer moans; a long drawn out sound that sends shivers of ecstasy rushing through Loki’s body.
Wanting to hear it again, he emits a series of little puffs along the hawk’s ribs, almost like tiny kisses, but his lips never touching skin.
His reward is another moan, a little deeper, a little longer than the first, and the Archer’s hips jerk forward, driving his length into the tight hollow of his hand.
“Faster” Loki whispers, voice hardly louder than a leaf drifting on the breeze.
“Yes.” murmurs the Archer, his hand moving more rapidly up and down his cock and Loki’s breath hitches.
Barton is responding….but not aware.
Perfect.
His whole body aching, as if lovingly flogged with the softest silk, and his skin too tight, Loki contemplates the sight before him, the straining muscles, the slight stubble on the chin, the flushed complexion, the winged curve of the mouth, begging to be kissed, plundered.
But no…not yet. Even as he burns with the need to press his lips to the Archer’s, this is the one thing he cannot do. Who knows if the Archer, mind swamped with pleasure and the need to be touched, might not detect Loki’s caress?
For now, he has to stick to things that the Archer might think of as being only a fantasy, provided by his own overheated mind.
“Harder” Loki orders, voice soft like the footfalls of a cat.
“Yes.” Barton sighs, a hint of a sob mellowing his voice.
The Archer’s hips have found a new rhythm as he pumps his cock into his fist, gasping hard at the increased friction. He is close now, so close.
“Come for me.”
“YES.”
Barton shoots his load, body going rigid as if he’d been stabbed, mouth wide, groaning, breath reduced to short, desperate pants that slowly even out as his body relaxes, melting against the ugly greyish tiles as if they’re all that stops him from dissolving into a puddle.
Time to go.
Loki dispels the shade and finds himself back on Jotunheim, still snuggled into the bales of soft moss.
He looks down at himself, chagrined.
So much for doing a bit of reconnaissance today.
It’s just a good thing that leather cleans easy.
- 10
- 11
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Trickster's Gambit