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Take Care of You (Loki/Reader Lullabies #215)

Fandom: Marvel/Avengers

Pairing: Loki/Reader (gender specifically not specified, but, for transparency sake, I did imagine them as female)

Category: Angst/fear. Fluff.

Rating: G.

Summary: You’re intriguing to him, an oddly-mysterious caretaker who works in Stark’s medical wing. Of course Loki’s never been one to turn down a mystery, but what happens one night when the Tower falls in around you?

Warnings/Notes: There’s some violence in this one: you’re taken hostage, threatened, and then...uh...kill a man to save yourself. I think the concepts in this story are probably a little more graphic than typical canon, but I’m not explicit when it comes to describing the gore or anything. Also, this story was inspired directly by this post from @whumpkinpie!

New but Retroactive Reminder for this and all of my fics: I do not, have not, and will not give anyone permission to copy/paste, translate, or otherwise take or modify this story to post it anywhere else. You can find my stories here on Tumblr or under kaeorin on AO3, but nowhere else. This does not apply only to fics which hold this disclaimer--NONE of my works are to be stolen or modified. Additionally, please remember that Liking a post on Tumblr does not increase the author's exposure. I don't run your life, but readers should be reblogging the works they like.

Take Care of You

You were, somehow, an enigma. You, the quiet mortal with gentle hands, caring for a team of superheroes who always came back from missions badly hurt. Loki knew how hard you worked. He’d been on enough missions to know how careless Rogers was, or how little regard for his own safety Barnes had. And still, on the rare occasion that Loki allowed someone to lead him to the med bay after a mission of his own, he watched you work. You didn’t give them a hard time. You didn’t crack jokes-that-weren’t-truly-jokes with them as you cleaned their wounds and determined whether they were deep enough to need stitches while their medically-enhanced bodies knit their skin back together. You just took care of them.

With the women, you were much the same. Natasha did not much care for seeking medical attention, but Loki had to notice how she gradually began accepting your help. Was there something in your silence that encouraged even the most stoic of the heroes to speak to you? It seemed like it didn’t take long at all before you were able to make her crack a smile. Make her laugh out loud.

Maybe he started spending more time in the med bay than was strictly necessary, but a mystery like you was something rare in this hellish realm, and Loki was curious by nature.

He watched you work, and you worked a lot. Day in and day out, there you were, amid all the other people Tony kept around in hopes of keeping the Avengers in fighting shape. Whether someone came in with a gaping chest wound or a tiny burn, you always looked after them with the same sort of gravitas. Your eyes would go all dark, and your brows heavy, as you tended to their wounds. There were times where Loki would swear that you must have reached through the veil to the realm of death and pulled people back into your own realm. Somehow, no one said a word to you about the miracle that was your touch.

It was rare for him to see you take a breath. He almost never got to watch your shoulders relax, or to hear you heave a sigh of relief. Every once in a while, after bowing low over someone’s limb while stitching someone up, you would straighten again and stretch your back, but it wasn’t enough. You worked hard. Too hard. And all the Avengers just kept running back out into the field and getting themselves torn apart because they knew you’d patch them up again.

He wanted to bring you coffee. It was a strange urge, and, for a long time, it was relatively easy to ignore. He was a part of the team, and had been for a long time now, and, while the Avengers could largely look at him without obviously seeing the villain he’d been before, that wasn’t the case for everyone in the Tower. Right now, while he lurked in the shadows, he did not have to see the way you’d truly look at him. As long as he avoided you altogether, he could avoid destroying this image of you that he’d built up in his mind.

But you patched him up just like you did to everybody else. Your hands were warm when you inspected his wounds, your touch tender but professional as you set to work. You didn’t hesitate or seem to have to steel yourself before approaching him. You spoke to him the way you spoke to everybody—rarely, perhaps a little haltingly, but only because you were distracted by your work. He’d even made you laugh, once, when you tried to use a standard suture kit to sew him back up again, only to discover that his skin, like his brother’s, was entirely too strong for that. He’d cracked a joke—it was hard to remember exactly what it was; the pain was intense and he’d lost a lot of blood—and you’d laughed out loud before remembering yourself and sinking your teeth into your lower lip.

When you met his gaze, your eyes sparkled.

So maybe it wasn’t as destructive an idea as he feared it was—the idea of bringing you coffee. He didn’t have any more fanciful ideas than that. You were lovely to look at, of course, but he was not particularly interested in involving himself with a mortal. Certainly not a mortal hereand now. Perhaps a few generations from now, when the world had had a chance to forget the things he’d done, but his terror was still all too fresh in modern memory. For all of SHIELD’s attempts at positive public relations, too much of the city still bore the scars of the things he’d been forced to do. He’d come to terms with it, but he certainly did not expect any of the rest of you to do the same. Where would he even begin?

For now, coffee.

Most of the Avengers’ missions had wrapped up in the same two-day span, which meant that you were busy. The whole med bay was busy, really, but Loki’s main concern was, of course, you. He hated to be yet another patient on your list, but he did take advantage of that to check in on you. While you were deeply engrossed in finishing off the last of his sutures, he said your name in a low voice. You hummed your question without even looking up at him, and something about that took his breath away.

“Who looks after you?”

“Me?” You laughed quietly, brushing your fingers alongside your work. It was straight and perfect as always. It wasn’t hard to imagine that, beneath your surgical mask, you wore the slightest little smirk. You took pride in your work. It was endearing. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

“You spend your days—many days, might I add, too many days—here in the medical ward looking after all the many reckless heroes that truck in and out, bleeding everywhere. But at the end of your shift, or when it’s time for you to go home, who has ever looked after you?”

When you raised your eyes to meet his gaze, he was uncomfortably aware of how startled you looked. Your eyes were wide. Surely this wasn’t so foreign a concept to you, was it? You rose off of that awful little stool you’d been sitting on and turned away from him long enough to peel off your gloves and throw them away. But then you turned back to him again. Were you drawn by the same sort of pull that he was drawn by? Was it presumptuous to even wonder? “I’m f-fine. I can take care of myself.”

He did not miss the way your voice faltered. That was easy enough to explain away, he reasoned: you’d been working for hours. Surely you were exhausted. But he also watched the way you rubbed your hands on the front of your coat, watched you look at the stack of bandages still waiting for you on the tray beside him, and he had to fight back a smile as you retrieved another set of gloves to pull them back on again.

You were flustered.

He rather liked it.

Although he expected to see some kind of struggle in your eyes as you decided whether to sit before him again to finish taking care of him, you didn’t waver. It was your duty, after all, and you were nothing if not dutiful. Your hands did not tremble as you went back to work. Your touch was still soft. Your brow was still heavy.

“I know you can take care of yourself,” he said after a long silence. Someone as skilled as you were could certainly look after their own basic necessities. “But what if someone else wanted to do it? Would you have the courage to allow that?”

His heart was beating entirely too quickly. Had he lost too much blood again? This wasn’t exactly where he’d meant for this conversation to go. He’d done too much too soon. If it weren’t for the way you were still right there in front of him, settling the last of his bandages, he might have stood up to escape. There was only one possible outcome of this conversation right now, and it wasn’t the one he was hoping for. He began to cast about, desperate for ways to walk this back. Perhaps he could pretend he’d had a head injury? Or some other injury that needed tending to? Could he hurt himself with magic somehow, just enough to distract you and allow you to forget that he’d started all this?

You spoke. In the middle of his whirling thoughts, he nearly missed the beginning of your sentence. “—one’s ever...” You cut yourself off abruptly and straightened your shoulders with a grim laugh. “They could try. I’ve got plenty of courage. They wouldn’t last long, though.”

It was a challenge.

There was very little that Loki loved more than a challenge.

*

After that, he became even more of a fixture around the med bay. Where before he’d lurked in shadows and around corners, now he began allowing himself to approach you. Often he brought you coffee—or water, when he realized you’d already had too much coffee. He made sure you ate. Your schedule could be grueling, and he understood that, but when things got too bad, he stayed very close to you, warding off any unnecessary additional duties with a stony glare.

In the very beginning, it was clear that you were really just bracing yourself for the moment his attention would begin to fade. You kept yourself distant, almost cordial, and you seemed intensely uncomfortable with every little gesture he offered you. He didn’t take it personally. The mortal attention span was so fickle, after all. In his youth, he might have strayed just as quickly as any mortal man might have done, but he was on a mission, and he took that seriously.

It took a while, but gradually, he saw you relax into his presence. You never stopped thanking him for the snacks or beverages he pressed into your hands, but your voice did grow warmer. Less sheepish. You took to laughing in his presence more often, especially after watching how his glare made some agent or intern go skittering away. You started talking to him: sharing personal stories, revealing minor secrets, and of course he knew he had to repay you in kind.

He came to like you quite a lot, actually. He’d had this grand idea of the type of person you were in his head, but the reality of you seemed so much better. You never gave him the sidelong glances your kind tended to give him. You never flinched away from his touch, even if he forgot to give you a warning first. You often leaned into him for support when he made you laugh, and you said absolutely nothing when you caught the way he looked when pride stole across his features.

You became friends.

It took a lot of convincing, but he did finally managed to bring you up into his living quarters in the Tower. You weren’t fully comfortable in the common spaces with the others, but you did appear perfectly content to sit with him and talk, or read, or watch strange little Midgardian films. One night, you found a way to work your fingers into his hair and caress his scalp, and the perfect bliss that stole through him was enough to distract him from the novelty of it all for a long time. By the time he realized how mind-bendingly Strange it was for you to do that, or for him to allow it, he was already nigh-boneless in your lap, and he certainly wasn’t about to ask you to stop.

He got his chance for revenge (as it were) only a few days later. The two of you were sitting on the sofa in the med bay break room when he noticed the way you kept shifting your feet and legs. They pained you often, he knew: such was the life of someone in the medical profession. Even Tony Stark could not design flooring or shoes which eliminated the pressure of being on your feet all day. So Loki shifted in his seat and reached to yank your legs up into his lap. You barely had time to protest before he’d removed one of your shoes and closed his fingers around the arch of your foot, and then whatever words you were trying to speak were stolen away by the breathless gasp that escaped you instead.

He couldn’t help but grin.

You did your best to protest, of course. You told him that he didn’t need to do that, that you were fine, really, Loki stop it, that’s so gross. But—and this was key—you did not try to pull your feet away from him. So he went on. He massaged your aching muscles and did his best to ease the tension in your feet and legs, and he also tried to ignore the way you tried to choke back your quiet moans and whimpers. By the time he was finished, you’d gone basically still and silent. Pride crept through him yet again—it often did, when he was with you—and he gave the arches of your feet one last tender squeeze.

When you sat up to put your shoes back on, you were moving so slowly, as though you were trying to figure out how to inhabit your body again. You tried to speak a few times, but cut yourself off each time before you could get out a full sentence. Finally, as you tied the laces on your second shoe, you sighed deeply and looked up at him.

“Thank you.”

The words were heavy with the unspoken. It made him smile.

“I’m only looking after you.”

*

Some time later, all hell broke loose.

It was hard to know exactly how it had all started. Barnes and Rogers had been on a mission, and then they’d come home, and, only a short while after that, blaring alarms filled the corridors of the whole Tower. Various speakers and devices were shouting at the heroes in the living space of the Tower, but it was hard for him to focus on anything for long enough to make sense of it. Security had been breached. Hostiles had made their way into the lower areas of the Tower. There were casualties.

A bitter chill settled into Loki’s body then, harsh and unforgiving. Because you were at work. He’d left you there less than an hour ago, fully-stocked on both water and snacks, along with his solemn vow to return around the end of your shift to make sure no one asked you to stay on later. He tried desperately to catch any strand of conversation, anything that might point towards your safety, but already people were too far gone. The heroes were suiting up and rolling out—not to their jet, but...to their home.

Loki followed suit, of course. It was a nightmare down there. The further down he went, the thicker the air got with smoke and ash and toxins. Whoever these people were, they’d come prepared. He took out a good number of them without even really thinking about it. He needed to get to the med bay. He needed to get to you.

It took time. Everything was chaos and, while he normally would have delighted in something like that, today it was impossible. Too many of the enemies landed blows that were too solid, blows that he should have been able to ward off. He made them pay for it, of course, and made them pay dearly, but it still rattled him.

When he got to the med bay, it was nearly unrecognizable. What few lights remained were flickering madly, threatening to go out at any moment. But the air was unnervingly still. There was no chorus of choking coughs or low groans, as there’d been on the floors above. There were no wounded victims down here. He pushed the thought aside. You were hiding somewhere. You were smart. You were brilliant. You would have known what was happening and you would have sought shelter somewhere. He only needed to find you and everything would be alright again. He should never have let you out of his sight.

He had no idea where he was going, but his feet carried him forward anyway. Maybe he was tracking some tiny trace of your existence, or maybe his body was just acting on instinct as a means of avoiding the truth. He stepped through a doorway into a darkened room lit only by the beam of some high-powered flashlight, and then he froze.

Because you were there. You were there clutched in the grip of some man wearing all black, right down to the mask that covered his face. He had one arm wrapped around your throat while he used the other to scatter items off the shelves in one of the refrigerators.

The silence of the room was marred only by the sounds of little glass vials clinking, shattering, and by your ragged battle for breath. Loki rasped out your name before he could stop himself, and the man in black spun to face him. The light from his headlamp was blinding, but Loki caught the way he shifted to hold you in front of him like a shield. Instead of choking you with his forearm, the man clamped his hand over your mouth to stifle any words you might have attempted. His free hand unsheathed a blade and pressed it to your throat in a clear threat. In any other situation, Loki might have rolled his eyes at the pathetic size of the blade, but it was right there on your skin. It was enough.

“I could get it from him,” the man growled against the side of your head. Your eyes went wide, and you tried to shake your head, but he only tightened his grip. “I bet I could. Drop your weapon. Get away from the door.” That one, of course, was delivered to Loki himself, in an accent he could not recognize. From opposite sides of the room, they began to circle: Loki stepping away from the door, and the man approaching it to block his exit.

There were ten thousand things that Loki should have been doing in this situation—the man was only a mortal after all, and he could easily overpower someone like him—but it was all he could do to focus on the knife against your throat. He imagined he could see your pulse from here, hammering away just beneath the surface of your skin. Breathe, love. It’s alright.

“Heard stories that Stark’s got reserves of magic potions in here,” your captor went on. “Blood from men we used to call gods. Blood from men we turned into gods. Blood from a man who could murder a god. Lot of people out there willing to do a whole lot to get their hands on blood like that.”

Loki snorted despite himself. Pitiful mortals. “That’s all you’re here for? You’ve blown holes into the Tower and murdered all these people because you want blood?”

The man shifted a bit, and the knife bit into your skin. It was hard to see, but Loki was convinced that he could smell the blood trickling down your throat. “Among other things.” His tone promised death. He jerked your head a little, making you squeak against his hand. Rage bloomed hot in Loki’s chest. “This one doesn’t know where they keep all the magic, but I know you. I know you’ve got the magic right there in your veins, don’t you?”

He choked back the bitter, metallic taste of his anger and took one cautious step forward. He really could just send this mortal into another realm—perhaps a lovely molten realm, or one with acid in the air—but he couldn’t take his eyes off of you, and the desperate way you were clawing at that man’s hand. “I’ve magic, yes. But if you want it, you’ll have to release your prisoner.”

His eyes narrowed at that, and he tightened his grip on his knife. Loki’s heart lurched. He nearly flung himself at the two of you, but just managed to keep himself under control.

The seconds stretched into eternities. Loki couldn’t see the man’s eyes beneath the beam of light, but he could sense the way he was sizing him up. At long last, he flung you down and away from him. You stumbled for too many heart-stopping seconds, but then caught yourself before hitting the floor. Loki could see the way your chest was heaving. This was all too much. He caught your gaze, held it, hoping like hell that he could will some peace into you somehow.

“The magic. Let’s go.” Maneuvering so he was still more or less blocking the exit, the man reached out to rummage through some materials on the nearest counter top. “At least three vials. Maybe more, since the doctor’s too fucking stupid to know where the rest of the blood is.” He brandished a syringe for a moment before throwing it at you. It was hard not to smile. He’d found one of the mortal syringes, the ones that couldn’t pierce Loki’s skin. None the wiser, the man gestured at you with the knife, and even took a menacing step forward.

You played along. You flinched, then hurried to stand beside Loki. When you reached out to touch his arm, your hands were trembling—but strong. Gentle thing. Steadfast thing. Carefully, you shifted so that your body blocked the man’s view of what exactly you were doing, and then you pressed the syringe to Loki’s skin. Something in your movements told him that you had some sort of plan, but he couldn’t tell exactly what it was.

After some time, you took a few steps backwards, away from Loki and towards your captor. Your face was blank. It made Loki’s chest feel tight. Before he could do or say anything, though, you burst into action: you spun to face the man in black and, in one smooth motion, you leaped towards him and rammed the syringe into his throat. Air. An air embolism. A grim sort of pride bloomed inside him. The man roared and lashed out at you, but by the time he managed to fling you away, smashing you into the counter, it was too late.

His movements became jerky and uncoordinated even as he waved his blade at the two of you. He got entirely too close to you for Loki’s comfort before crumpling to the floor, gasping for breath. Some part of Loki’s mind told him to grab you and get you out of there, but he was frozen. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from this man, this stupid mortal so full of arrogance and misguided notions that he thought this mission could ever be of any value to him whatsoever. His head lolled as his limbs thrashed, guttural noises spilling out of his mouth as his body shut down. And all Loki could truly feel was satisfaction. He got what he deserved, for putting his hands on you.

You.

When he looked up at you, your eyes were similarly fixed on the man on the floor. In the darkness, your face looked...hollow, somehow. Something pulled at his chest. He should never have allowed you to be the one to do that. Had you ever killed a man before? Had you meantto kill this man? Adrenaline could wreak havoc on Midgardians, he knew. Finally, Loki shook himself free and stepped over the man, reaching to take a solid hold on your arm so he could hurry you out of there. You’d been down here long enough, surrounded by smoke and death and terror. He could get you away from here, and he did.

*

The rest of the Avengers put a stop to the other intruders at least as quickly as you’d done. In truth, Loki wasn’t terribly concerned with the rest of the Tower. He’d found you. That was all that counted. Without thinking about it, he hauled you up to his living quarters. You sat on the edge of his bed and kept your hands pinned between your knees. You looked uncharacteristically small. Something inside him twinged at the sight of you. It kept him from getting too close. He wanted to hover near the doorway, but...of course he couldn’t do that.

“Are you hurt?” His voice sounded so wrong, so unfamiliar in the stillness of his room. Are you hurt. What a stupid question. Even from here, he could see the tiny rivuletof blood down your throat, from where the blade had scratched your skin. It wasn’t nearly deep enough to be dangerous, but it was Wrong all the same. As though you could feel him taking in the sight of it, you lifted one trembling hand to touch the wound and shook your head.

“It’s—no.” You drew in a long, slow breath. “I’m okay, don’t worry.”

It was abundantly clear that you weren’t actually okay, but Loki held his tongue. He’d play along. For now. He forced himself to approach you: he moved slowly, carefully, unwilling to startle you. But you gave no sign of discomfort, and so he finally allowed himself to sit there on the bed beside you. He reached out to take your hand before he could truly decide to do so. Your skin felt so cold. He wrapped both of his hands around yours in hopes of warming you. You let him do it.

“All those people…”

Leave it to you. The healer. The caretaker. You’d just been taken hostage, fought for your life, killed a man, and your main concern was with those who’d fallen around you. Loki wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry. Instead, he brought your hand up to his lips so he could kiss your knuckles again and again. He could have lost you, and yet here you were in his bed.

“You could not have saved them. This wasn’t your fault.” He squeezed your hand, and smiled to himself when he felt you close your fingers weakly around his thumb in response. “You did all that you were required to do. You survived. You got out of there alive. That is all that anyone could have asked of you. Tell me you believe me.”

When you looked at him, your eyes were still too dark. It wasn’t hard to tell that you were haunted by what you’d seen, what you’d done. He couldn’t blame you, but it still weighed on him. Maybe if he hadn’t left you alone, he could have protected you better. Maybe he could have done away with that man before he’d even laid eyes on you.

“I know that look.” Your voice carried far too much understanding for a mortal. You scooted just a little bit closer to him and then reached out with your other hand to cup his cheek in your palm (also chilled, but comforting nonetheless). “If that’s true for me, then it’s just as true for you. You couldn’t have known that was coming. I know you’re a magical god-kingfrom outer space, but you’re not psychic.” A sardonic smile twisted the corners of your mouth. He couldn’t help but laugh.

“Stay here,” he said, entirely without meaning to. It was apropos of nothing, but, at the same time, once he’d spoken the words aloud, they consumed him. The idea of allowing you to leave—to go back to your place, where you’d be so completely alone and unprotected—made him sick. Your hand that he still held, he pressed firmly against his chest so he could raise one of his hands to cup yours where you were still touching his cheek. It wasn’t enough. Could anything be enough, his desperate mind wondered, if you were not fully pressed against him, sheltered in his arms? “Don’t leave tonight.” An unspoken ‘or ever’ filled the silence between you and made your eyes go a little wider.

When you mumbled your reply, a rough ‘I won’t’ or ‘Okay’ or something similar, the words were swallowed up by the rushing in his ears, but the sentiment behind them made it a little easier for him to breathe. Neither of you said much after that. You sat in silence, just touching one another and relishing the relative safety in the room.

As darkness fell, you rose on shaky legs and asked about showering. You smelled of smoke, you laughed, but Loki heard what you didn’t say. I smell of death. He ushered you into his en-suite washroom, and then scoured his things for any clothing that might fit you. When you were finished, and fully swathed in his clothing—the material that had once rested against his skin now resting against yours—it was hard for him to tear his eyes away from you. For the first time all day, it gave him the sense that he could truly look after you. Standing there, wrapped in his clothing and his scent, you were finally safe.

It took a bit of awkwardness, but before long, the two of you were tucked carefully into bed. Loki lay there quietly, thinking, wondering if it was appropriate for him to put his arms around you, but before he could work up the nerve to ask, you turned towards him and buried your face against his chest. Warmth flooded through him, and he was quick to wrap his arms around you to hold you close. You didn’t speak. He worked his fingers through your damp hair and listened to the sound of your breathing. You didn’t sleep for a long time, but neither did you speak, so he held his tongue as well. This could be okay. You were warm against him, and he felt the way your muscles relaxed as he touched you. So what if you weren’t falling asleep? This was good, regardless.

Later that night, after the both of you had finally drifted to sleep, a nightmare—the first of many—ripped through you and dragged you back to wakefulness with a choking gasp. You clung to him like he was someone who could save you and he murmured soft reassurances to you in the darkness. You were alive. Perhaps you were not currently ‘alright’, but you were alive, which meant that you had the chance to get there someday. And, as he listened to you struggling to breathe normally again even as he caressed the back of your head, Loki whispered a promise to the both of you against the skin of your forehead. I’m here. I’ll always be here.

And he would.

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