Yes yes yes, this chapter! It's a turning point I think. Towards what? You'll have to wait and see. Enjoy xo

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Clint sat there in a ball long enough for his ass to go numb. At some point, he'd stopped crying, but then he just felt like an idiot and didn't want to have to face Loki and the whole world looking at him with pity.

With a regretful sigh, he lifted his head. Loki was still sitting in the same place, still making Clint's side warm- though it was more a comfort now than it was when he first sat down. When Clint forced himself to turn and look at him, he was surprised to find Loki looking at him expectantly. There wasn't an ounce of pity in his eyes.

"I'm not going to say sorry again, but I feel like a dick," Clint started, voice hoarse from crying.

Loki's brow creased for a moment before he spoke. "You never have to apologize to me, Clint. Not ever." It was so sincere and yet sounded so easy coming out of Loki's mouth that Clint was starting to actually believe him when he said that he took care of his Clint in some far off, very different universe.

"Thanks," was all Clint could think to say, all that would really come out. He felt exhausted, truly exhausted, and realized how little he'd had to eat and how little sleep he'd gotten in the past two days. Like Loki could read his mind, he placed a cool hand on Clint's arm.

"You may lay down in my bed if you'd like." Clint was immediately shaking his head, but Loki continued. "I would not tell your friends. I only wish for your rest and health." He was wearing Clint down, and he could tell. "I won't pretend to know you, but if you are similar to my Clint, you enjoy the warmth of another body when you sleep."

He did enjoy the warmth of another body when he slept. Fuck.

"You can't tell anyone. Not Thor. No one," Clint warned, eyelids already falling heavy.

"Not a soul, I swear it."

Clint nodded and Loki helped him to stand and then placed him in the bed provided to the room, covering him with a warm blanket. He decidedly ignored the stroke Loki gave his cheek before going around the other side and sliding in behind him. For a moment, Clint tensed, but then Loki rubbed his arm in soothing strokes and the archer melted into the touch. Loki was close, but not quite touching, and it just wasn't quite enough. 

Clint grabbed Loki's hand and pulled him closer, so their bodies were flush, and tucked Loki's arm around his waist. He refused to think about what would happen if someone were to come in, if one of his teammate- if Natasha- found them like that. He just wanted to sleep, and he felt it coming on already. 

He didn't wake up for hours, and when he did, he was warm and comfortable. He sighed and pressed back into the alcove of peace that surrounded him, only to earn a delighted hum in return.

Clint froze. He was in bed with someone. He hadn't been in bed with someone since...He stopped right there and instead racked his brain for where he was and who was behind him before he opened his eyes. Just as he was piecing it together, he heard a soft, "You are safe."

He wanted to bolt, wanted to throw back the covers and jump up, but Loki was warm and he'd just slept better than he had in months, and maybe he didn't want to move dammit. The archer relaxed, spine pressing to Loki's firm chest. It was the signal Loki needed to holder him tighter and whisper, "Thank you."

Clint buried half his face in the pillow. "Don't thank me," he whispered back, afraid to break the quiet.

"I am grateful for your trust and would prefer to voice it," Loki. explained.

Clint regretfully shuffled under the blanket and Loki's arm, not dislodging it but separating them by a few inches, to turn over and look at the god. "See, yeah, I don't trust you, that's the thing." Before Loki could offer some high brow words of wisdom, Clint rattled on. "The only reason I can even stand to be here right now is that I know you're not him."

Loki's green eyes went hard, and Clint fruitlessly thought that he should have an exit plan. But then the god clenched his jaw hard, chin practically vibrating, and said, "I must have done something unspeakable to you." The words were so filled with self-hatred that Clint felt dirty just being near them. 

"You took everything from me," Clint accused, quiet but strong.

It was Loki that time that cast his eyes downward, looking at Clint's shoulder. "Did I not...fix it?"

Clint scoffed and pushed away from the god, throwing the blanket away and slipping out from under Loki's arm to sit on the edge of the bed, facing the wall. "How could you fix that?"

"I do not know what that is," Loki complained, exasperated. The entire time he'd been here, Loki had been the picture of calm in front of Clint, but it felt good to see that façade crumble a bit. 

"I'm sure your reality is similar enough to mine for you to guess," spat Clint.

There was shifting behind the archer as Loki had sat up. "Yet my Clint is the love of my life and I would go to war for his honor." Clint didn't want to hear it, couldn't take it. It wasn't fair. He stood up abruptly and walked towards the door. The bed creaked and then Loki's frantic, "Please, wait," stopped him. Clint didn't turn around.

Loki spoke again, "If our realities are similar indeed, then I can only imagine the heartache your Loki feels at the hatred you harbor towards him."

Clint barked a humorless laugh and spun around, metaphorical steam swirling off his head. "That monster feels nothing! He stole my mind," Clint tapped furiously at his temple, "and my will and then had the gall to steal my heart!" He turned and swung a fist out, punching the wall and denting the plaster. "That monster used me and told me that he cared about me and then left me there on that helicarrier to go back to my old life like nothing happened."

It was spilling now and he couldn't temper the flow. "He showed me things I'd never even dreamt of. He told me things I couldn't possibly understand. He made me question everything about myself, my life, and then ghosted me like a scared little boy." Clint sank to his knees, breathing hard and barely holding back tears. "That week with him was the best week of my life and I can't tell anyone." 

He fell onto his hands, on all fours and staring at the floor. "I spent years without him, trying to forget what I learned about myself, trying to fix myself. Then, they told me he was dead and..." He collapsed forward, burying his face in his hands. "Fuck!" he screamed, muffled against his skin. 

Then, Loki's hand was on his back, rubbing soothingly up and down his spine and Clint flinched away. He sat back on his haunches and rubbed away the wet evidence of the weight he'd been carrying for years. "I swear I never cry this much." Loki chuckled but didn't say anything. Clint wrung his hands together, glaring at them. "I guess that's not really how things went down for you and your Clint?"

"No, I am relieved to say it ended very differently," Loki confirmed.

"How?" Clint begged, swallowing down the desperation he heard in his voice.

Loki swirled his fingers and warmth slipped around Clint, relaxing his shoulders and making him slump back against the door. "I did take him but I did not leave him." The god got into the same position Clint had found him when he and Thor walked in on him, seeming to settle in for a story. "I saw into his mind and I was awed by him. He was the strongest, purest man I'd ever met. And he did not see 'a monster'," Loki emphasized the words for Clint, "when he looked at me." Clint dared a look over at the god, and Loki was looking right back at him, a small smile gracing his features. "I could hardly wait to be alone with him and remove my influence."

"Did you?"

"I did," Loki told him, smiling wider. "He did not run like I expected, like I almost wished he had." At Clint's look of confusion, Loki answered, "I knew I would ruin him and I thought it better if he left, but I was not brave enough to grant his leave so I hoped he would take the chance and run."

"What did he do?" Clint wondered, shifting into a more comfortable position.

Loki's eyes lit up. "He kissed me."

That, at least, was familiar. Clint remembered doing it. He inserted his point of view. "I'd seen into his head just like he saw into mine. I saw the way he thought about me. I'd never felt that from anyone before." He scoffed. "Not like I'm a hopeless loser who's never dated, but no one had ever accepted me so fully before," he urged, hand gripping at the air like it was tangible. "I didn't feel any judgment or assumption like I did from nearly everyone else in my life."

"Except Natasha," they both added and then their eyes went wide. If Clint didn't know any better, he'd say Loki was blushing.

"You have mentioned something like this before, and I know of your great respect for your friend," the god informed him. "Please, keep going."

With another encouraging nod from Loki, the archer did. "I kissed him," Clint admitted and bit down on his lip, worrying it between his teeth.

"What did I do?" Loki asked.

The memory made Clint lick his lips and he couldn't quite look Loki in the eye, as if the information would somehow make it back to his Loki. "You sighed like..." He bit his lip again, thinking. "Like you'd waited your whole life for it."

Loki hummed. "Yes, that I remember."

"Yeah?"

"Very clearly. We didn't speak that night, not a word, but-" He huffed a laugh. "I knew exactly what you needed."

"Even without the scepter," Clint supplemented. Loki nodded. "The way you- he touched me." The archer's lids got heavy. "Possessive and hungry."

"I was," Loki added. "The way you responded to my touch...No creature has ever given me that desire."

They were leaning towards each other without realizing, their shoulders brushing. Clint's voice was barely audible when he spoke. "You leaned over me and whispered in my ear-"

Loki growled. "Mine." 

Clint nodded, hands rubbing down his thighs to wipe the sweat away. "I should've been so pissed, but I wasn't. In that moment, it was true- truer than the entire time you kept me in that goddamn haze, truer than anything I'd done since I joined S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Did I enact the scepter's power again afterward?"

This was were Clint got ashamed of himself every time he thought back over that week. "Not immediately," he confessed. The night together- the passionate, wild sex- he could write off as a mix between thinking with the wrong head and fear of what Loki would do to him if he refused- however untrue it might be- but after, when Loki offered him his freedom in exchange for his companionship, and Clint accepted- well, there's no excuse for that.

"You told me that you wanted me to stand beside you."

"And you agreed," Loki certified. "But you'd changed my mind on so many things that night."

"You said that you didn't want to go through with the invasion."

"I put you in danger by admitting such things to you."

Clint rolled his eyes. "You said that back then, too." He reached out and took Loki's hand. "The Other threatened you, but we had a plan."

Loki leaned over just the tiniest bit and kissed Clint's shoulder. "To sabotage the invasion and save your world."

"We were going to pull it off, too. I snuck in suggestions to Selvig to rig the thing so he could shut it down later. Then, I don't know...A few nights after that you changed. You went away like you did sometimes, eyes blank and everything, but this time when you came back, you were angrier than I'd ever seen you and cold like when I met you in the warehouse."

Loki was shaking his head. "That is not my reality. We did sabotage the invasion. You testified to my father on my behalf and saved my life. You convinced the Avengers to give me the chance I never gave them. You chose me."

"Then what happened?" Clint demanded, squeezing Loki's hand tight. "What went wrong? You'd kissed me that night like it was the last time, even though you made sure to spend the few days we had left together doing nothing but kissing me. That's when you started to show me everything. You were so powerful, it made my knees shake."

The god turned Clint's hand over and ran smooth, soft fingertips along the sensitive underside of his wrist. "Did I collar you? That is your favorite."

Clint's brows shot up, then he cringed internally at the instant intrigue he felt. He should be running when someone like Loki said things like that, but he didn't move. "What? No. Nothing like that, but he didn't need a collar. He held me down and made me beg him to let me come. I would sit at his feet sometimes while he planned and he'd...pet me.

He'd slide into bed with me and cover my body with his and that's when I found out I liked sleeping with someone's weight and warmth on me." Clint's eyes drooped closed; he could see it all like a movie in his head. "He gave me something I didn't even know I needed. I genuinely thought I could stay like that forever." 

He opened his eyes again, a crease forming between his brows. "Stupid," he chastised. "Then he woke up one morning, said the plan had changed and touched me with that fucking stick. He didn't even kiss me one more time. I felt myself shrinking inside my head, screaming for him to take it back." Clint took a long deep breath and finished, "Then we attacked the helicarrier and he left me there to deal with everything by myself. He was shipped off to Asgard and I didn't even get to ask him why."

The archer let go of Loki's hand to rake it through his hair, sticking it up in crazy directions. "He left me here and I couldn't sleep; I couldn't get him out of my head." He groaned, frustrated. "I tried to get that feeling back, but I didn't even know what it was. I tried a few things with Natasha- she never asked why, but I think maybe she knew- but it wasn't the same."

"Because I am your dom, not Romanov," Loki growled like he couldn't help. 

Clint warned, "Don't start that shit again. You already fucked me up enough as it is, I don't need to have any more weird flaws."

"Being a submissive is not a flaw," commanded the god, leaving no room for argument.

"Right, well, that's not me, so it doesn't matter. I am many things, Loki, but a sub is not-"

There was a bang on the door, making Clint startle. Loki just sighed and said, "He does not like me." 

Before Clint could ask who he meant, Tony's voice filtered through the door. "Hey, Clint. I know you're still in there because F.R.I.D.A.Y. didn't see you leave. Thor made me promise not to come down here two hours ago, but now I'm slightly afraid you're dead. Not that you're not a primo fighter, pal, but he's Loki, you know, and the power dampeners in the room aren't enough to-"

"Shut up, Stark. I'm fine," Clint barked. "What do you want?"

Tony's voice was softer when he said, "It's dinner time and the team's waiting for you."

Clint turned his wrist over and looked at his watch. It was nearly seven p.m. "Oh, wow. Um.." He looked to Loki and then huffed, sorting his next words carefully. "You hungry?"

Loki looked surprised but pleased. "Very," he admitted.

"Okay, then, yeah. We're going to just go eat with the team. That's normal. It's fine," Clint rambled as he stood. Loki stood up as well and moved back so the archer could open the door.

"Loki's coming to dinner," Clint shot out before he could stop himself. When Tony's mouth immediately opened, Clint held up a hand. "I don't want to hear it. This isn't the same Loki, and you've kept him in this room for two days. He's hungry. We're eating."

With that, Clint walked around Tony and out towards the elevator. 

***

I'm such a sucker for dom!Loki. I mean, who isn't? 

Okay so! Side note: I'm really in the mood to fulfill some smut prompts. I'm thinking about making a collection like I did way back for 1D. If you have a request (a ship, a kink, an AU, or all of them) comment or send me a message! 

Rules: Nothing under 16, no rape/non-con (dub-con I can work with), and no watersports or tentacles. Other than that, BRING IT ON!

Also, comment just to let me know how you feel about Clint and Loki's relationship so far.

Mwah! Xoxo, Jess