Part 4.

It was almost two weeks later and Tony still frequently disappeared around midnight. I figured it was just something he does, going out for midnight strolls. We were not very used to sleeping in one bed together, since we hadn't been doing so for long, so I didn't know whether this was usual behaviour or not. I only knew that he was now in the habit of telling me when he was leaving, and that he usually returned before morning. So it was okay. I trusted Tony to tell me if something was wrong, and if for whatever reason he had decided to cheat on me- well, that would suck, but I think I would notice.

Now I had thought about that a lot, about those mysterious moonlit trips, but in the end I had decided to let it go. Tony liked his privacy, and after he had summed it all up, it did seem like he had been through quite a lot. Maybe walking through the spacious streets of Manhattan in the quiet night was helping him process all that. So after accepting that he would vanish once every 3 days or so, you can imagine how pissed I was when he brought up the subject of trust.

"You do trust me ,right?" He asked, seeming a little uncertain, and if I were to be honest, a little guilty as well. Normally I would have seen it as one of those cute Tony moments, in which he was insecure and stammering in contrast with his usual confident smirk and dirty mouth. But I had barely slept that night (mostly because it had taken Tony more than 5 hours, by which time it was already after 3 AM, to realize that sleep might be useful after all), and irritation was starting to pile up.

"Ha! Now that's a good one!" I gave a sceptical laugh, coming off as a little crazy. "Ha-ha. Good, one, Tony. I see how you would be insecure. 'Cause I'm the one that leaves in the middle of the night. Disappears for a couple of hours. I'm mister no-feel, sounds like me to never bring up the subject of love. Sound familiar?"

"Well geez, sorry I brought it up. I'll just leave if it suits you better." He mumbled, already pulling a scarf tightly around his neck and grabbing the jacket that he had thrown next to the (of course not on) the clothes hanger and shrugging his arms into it.

"Yes, just run away like you always do. That'll make you seem trustworthy." I snapped.

It was only when he had slammed the door behind him that I was starting to realize how outrageous and immature I had been. Tony was supposed to feel safe with me, was supposed to know that he could share anything, ask anything, without feeling like an imbecile. Now I got angry just because of a small insecurity of his (to which he had no right of having, but still).

As if things weren't bad enough, stuff in all colours and formats seemed to be hitting the fan now as Fury gave us a group-call telling us that Loki had been spotted again. Guess who just let their loved one get out there on his own, in the middle of the night, with a crazy criminal on the loose? Yep, Captain freaking America is who.

I sat down on our bed, picking up a tanktop that I could clearly remember shoving off of him the night before. Flashbacks of love making, of shared, secret moments that seemed to be so perfect at the time, but that now seemed somehow disturbed. Something had been wrong, out of place, and I had been too caught up with myself to notice that Tony had been struggling.

What the hell were we doing. Ruining our chance to be a proper couple by hiding emotions and reading into everything being said. I didn't even let him ask a simple question without starting a fight, no wonder he felt the need to hide an entire cocaine addiction from me! If we would just sit down and talk for once, just the two of us, without reincarnated Thunder Gods or over enthousiastic science buddies. Without shouting at each other at the top of our lungs. Maybe whatever was going wrong could be fixed that way.

But for now there were bigger problems at hand. Whatever Loki had tried to achieve by taking Tony, he might not have achieved it yet and we had pissed him off considerably. Now he had been sighted and my boyfriend was out there, alone, on the dark cold streets doing God know what and there was nothing to protect him for whatever the wizard had in store for him. For all I knew it was Loki who had made us start a fight with his annoying, even more annoyingly so invisible weapon, magic.

I wanted to call him, but my phone was nowhere to be found and I feared that I had forgotten it at the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, so not used to taking the useless gadget with me that I had left it there without missing it for a second. In a haste I started a search through our bedroom, trying to find a discarded tablet or phone of some kind and then hope by God that I could get as far as make a call to Tony's cell.

In the end I just strolled into Clint's room and grabbed his mobile phone out of his hand, and started texting rapidly while explaining that Tony had left. I left out the part where I told him to.

"You guys were fighting.. again?"

"That's not the damn point." I mumbled, trying to erase the flirty message that Clint had been half through typing before I had confiscated his beloved smartphone. "You heard Fury, Loki has been spotted." Clint snatched the phone back, handing me my own phone.

"Here's your mobile. It was on the freaking lunch table at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s." He was sounding a bit worried as he thrust the 2004 samsung model into my hands. "Come on, send him a text. You can do it." I didn't know whether he was teasing or encouraging, but my attention was already turned to the piece of technology, eyes roaming over the black on sepia letters. With much difficulty, I managed to compose a text that Tony would hopefully be able to decipher.

Com home. Loki. Danger.i xx

It was a bit unsettling how proud I was of that one text message. While hitting the send button, a million things were going through my mind. Where was Tony. Was he safe. Would he be coming home soon.

I didn't know that receiving the answers to those questions would result into a new wave of panic altogether. There was a knock on the door (Tony had not yet installed JARVIS in the new house, nor had he installed any kind of security system), so I immediately walked up to the door hoping to find Tony on the other side. Even though I knew the chance was small, considering that he had a key, I was blinded by the hope that he had returned home safely and that I would not be the one responsible for whatever could have happened.

When Loki was standing on the other side I was afraid, for one second, that all Hell would break loose and that we would end up in some kind of battle again. But then my eyes actually focused, anger temporarily dimmed by curiosity, and I could see there was something laying in his arms. A bundle with a black coat draped over it that I shakily realized as Tony´s expensive one, the one we'd bought together and the one that I would never forget because he'd bought it due to my comment of how good it looked on him.

I was standing there, the door seemingly stuck to my hand and my eyes scanning over the bundle until they landed on the patch of hair that was sticking out. I would have recognized the messy black bed hair anytime. I looked up at Loki, expecting to look into the eyes of the devil, expecting no less than a mean grin or a satisfied smirk. What I got instead were light green eyes that were staring at me helplessly.

"I didn't mean to. I swear I didn't want to hurt him.. one minute he was fine and the next he slipped and hit his head. I am truly sorry." He probably knew that I was buying none of his shit. "He's bleeding, we need to help him." I watched nervously as Loki grabbed the hood of the jacket and pulled it away, revealing the previously covered back of Tony's head and the gaping wound that was on it.

"Damn it." I muttered, not for the first time wishing that Tony would for once get away unscathed, and that I could be able to take the pain that he had to go through from him. I threw the coat on the floor, carefully lifting my fragile boyfriend from Loki's arms and placing him on the couch. "Can't you magic it right or something?" I asked in panic, running through the hallways with Loki on my heels. I had no idea where everyone's bedrooms were and there were so many rooms (but only 2 bathrooms, quick reminder) in the house that finding somebody was harder than I thought it would be.

"It doesn't work like that!" Loki shouted, eyes wide in a strangely familiar way that meant that he was worried after all. Why worry about the health of a man you tortured for a month? "I do care for him, you know. In a way." Loki mumbled as if reading my thoughts. I ignored him and started calling out names of team members.

I had never been happier to see Bruce storm out of his room. Considering he was the best medic in the house and that he was the only one awake at this God forsaken hour, I thought he was our best shot. Bruce didn't even comment upon spotting Loki and just gave an eye-roll and mumbled something about drama queens.

It only took Bruce one look at Tony to realize that we should bring him to a hospital. Not only had he hit his head pretty hard, but he was also under the influence of a lot of drugs.

We had somehow both decided that calling 911 at this stage would be useless, and I was already speed-walking towards my car, the hand that I had wrapped around Tony's shoulder drawing small circles to comfort him. I put Tony in the backseat, propping a pillow under his by Bruce bandaged head. Then the question came up whether to take Loki or not.

"He knows exactly what happened." I reasoned, knowing that the doctors would like to know this.

"We can't trust him. Did you forget how Phil died?" Bruce whispered, while Loki was making eyerolls and hopping from toes to heels in the background.

"No," I mumbled irritated, sliding one of Phil's blood-covered Captain America trading cards out of my pocket, where I kept it, and waving it in Bruce's face a couple of times to get the message across, "don't think I ever will. I'm not going to leave him with our sleeping friends, either."

It seemed like Bruce was convinced, so he went to Loki to set up some rules. I was busy trying to make Tony sit comfortably with his head against the car door and his feet propped up on the seat.

"You'll be fine, I promise." I whispered, kissing his cheek and closing the car door.

TBC