Redolence; 10: Appeasing
[Story Info]
Title: Redolence
Author: Del Rion (delrion.mail (at) gmail.com)
Fandom: The Avengers (MCU)
Genre: Erotica, drama, suspense
Rating: MA / FRAO
Characters: Bruce Banner (Hulk), Clint Barton (Hawkeye), J.A.R.V.I.S., Nick Fury, Loki, Pepper Potts, Steve Rogers (Captain America), Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow), Tony Stark (Iron Man), Thor
Pairings: Tony/OMC. Brief Tony/OFC/OMC. Implied past Pepper/Tony. OT6 (Bruce/Clint/Natasha/Steve/Thor/Tony) if you squint.
Summary: Tony disappears for days and returns with a rather unlikely companion, whom Tony then viciously protects from anyone who tries to separate them. Thor claims the alien is controlling Tony’s mind - but that is only the first of many problems the Avengers and Tony will be facing.
Complete.
Written for: Tentacle Big Bang (tentaclebigbang)
Also filling the “mind control” square on my card in Trope Bingo’s Round 1.
Artist: swcajolings / ART
Warnings: Sexual content between human/alien males (includes tentacles), brief het and slash threesome content (between humans), dubious consent/rape (sex while drugged/mind-controlled), (unwanted) male pregnancy, abortion, violence.
~ ~ ~
10: Appeasing
Bruce didn’t have time to sit down and get over the disorientation of the transformation.
He had been a few floors down, in search of sedatives, when J.A.R.V.I.S. had informed him a battle had broken out upstairs and that the Hulk might be needed in taking out the alien foe. How that was even possible between Steve and Thor being up there to manage things, Bruce didn’t know, but the sudden rush of concern for Tony had been enough to make the other guy force his way through.
Clearly that hadn’t been a wasted effort, judging from the smear on the floor that threatened to upset his stomach.
Thor was sitting on the floor, holding Tony’s body firmly to his, speaking in soothing tones. Clint looked like someone had tried to strangle him and Natasha was checking on him. Steve had drying blood smeared all over his neck and shoulder, suggesting another injury.
Bruce dismissed all that, knowing it was under control. S.H.I.E.L.D.’s medical unit was on the way, to manage the problem from here on out, but until then he had to do something about Tony’s hitching breaths or he would surely Hulk out again.
Moving forward, he settled down before Thor and the curled up form of his friend and fellow scientist. He reached out, slowly taking a hold of Tony’s wrist, then the other, turning him towards him. Tears stained Tony’s face and the look of horror was not something that belonged on his features. He tried to jerk away, to fight, but Bruce maintained the hold until Tony looked him in the eye and stopped struggling. Some clarity reached the wide, dark eyes - or then the pheromones they had dosed him with began working again, now that the alien was gone and couldn’t replenish his.
“You’re going to be fine,” Bruce reassured Tony. Thor’s hands rested on Tony’s body, rubbing circles on his back, and the touches seemed to have an effect, finally.
“I’m scared,” Tony admitted. “I don’t know… what to do. What to feel. What to think. It’s all so…”
“Messed up?” Bruce suggested.
Tony just nodded then looked up as Steve approached them hesitantly. It looked like Tony was going to break into sobs again and Steve swiftly knelt beside them, taking one of his gloves off and touching Tony’s cheek, pushing at the visible traces of tears. “Does it hurt anywhere?” he asked.
“Besides my heart?” Tony asked and let out a nervous laugh, then closed his eyes briefly and inhaled deeply. “I can… God, you all smell so good.”
Bruce cringed, knowing that was unlikely, at least in his case. He didn’t even want to know where the stickiness on the sole of his left foot had come from. However, it was a sign that their pheromone concoction was working and it was slowly calming Tony down.
“They’re almost here,” Natasha called out and helped Clint up, joining the strange circle. “They’ll… fix you up,” she said and briefly caressed Tony’s hair. He looked at her, following the motion of her hand. Tony was still nervous of Natasha, sometimes, after all these years; perhaps this was how their relationship would have been had she not jabbed him in the neck with a needle, Bruce mused.
Yeah, he had heard about that incident, repeatedly. Tony liked to tell it, even if it showed weakness on his part. It was his reminder of the fact that Natasha - or S.H.I.E.L.D. - shouldn’t be trusted even on a good day. Even if he worked with them.
“Please promise us this is the last time you put us through something as disgusting as this,” Clint noted, voice hoarse.
Tony’s expression flinched, just a bit, and Bruce actually elbowed Clint in the side, making the archer fall back from his crouch. Tony smiled, feeling the motion since Bruce was still holding his hands.
The elevator let out a sound; clearly J.A.R.V.I.S. had released the lock down - or S.H.I.E.L.D. had hacked the AI again, which would send Tony into another spiral of upgrades and revenge-hacking of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s files. Either way, a medical team approached, with a gurney and all, giving the destroyed room a brief look before approaching. “Mr. Stark,” one of them called out, stepping closer.
Tony jerked and leaned away from the man. “I don’t want to go with them,” he said quickly, trying to find one of their eyes to back him up.
“We’ll come with you,” Steve promised. “You’ll be fine.”
Tony swallowed, eyes so wide it was almost comical - but there was nothing funny about the situation. He was entirely too pale and the seizures may have stopped, but the reason for them was still there, inside him. “Are you sure?” Tony finally asked, looking at Steve.
“Yes,” Steve nodded and climbed to his feet with some difficulty. “I’ll be with you the entire way to the hospital. Bruce, too,” he added, seeing as Bruce still held Tony’s hands.
Tony nodded rigidly and started to get up. Thor and Bruce helped him along. They didn’t make him lie down before they got to the S.H.I.E.L.D.’s version of an ambulance, knowing how Tony hated appearing weak in front of people. The others would follow in the Quinjet, meeting them at S.H.I.E.L.D.’s private hospital.
Bruce leaned against the wall as the car drove away from the Tower, meeting Steve’s eyes. “We did okay,” he mused.
Steve nodded then glanced at Tony who had closed his eyes and appeared to be asleep for the time being, breathing shallow and erratic as if he were incredibly uneasy even while resting. Bruce held the hand closest to him a bit more tightly and hoped they weren’t too late.
- - -
When Tony stirred, the ceiling was moving and the lights were too bright. He panicked, jerking up, trying to sit, but a hand pressed him back down, adamant on his chest. He looked at it then relaxed a bit, recognizing the red glove and the blue that followed it. “Cap,” he murmured.
“I’m here,” Steve’s voice replied. “We’re all here.”
Tony settled down and they turned the gurney after a bit, passing a doorway, then stopped. He looked around, finding himself in a room, in a hospital. He didn’t like hospitals and wasn’t going to start now. “I want to go home,” he protested. “I’m fine.”
“You have alien eggs inside you,” Bruce’s voice reminded him.
“How could I forget?” Tony mused, wondering about it. In the middle of… everything… it wasn’t that surprising, but the cramps were coming back and he was tired of them, of the pain in his abdomen and the throwing up. And the seizures; those had been awful, especially when trapped inside the suit.
He forced himself to look around the room, finding the other Avengers there. Tony counted them carefully, sniffing and finding each smell as well, which he wasn’t going to let freak him out right now. “Where’s Loki?” he asked. He was sure he had seen him at the Tower.
“In S.H.I.E.L.D. custody,” Steve reassured him. “Hopefully he’ll still be there when we’re done here.”
Loki was good at convenient disappearing acts - convenient for him, anyway.
A woman walked in, pace crisp, face grim. “We’ve received preliminary test results as well as the data you collected,” she said. Tony guessed she was referring to whatever tests he had run with J.A.R.V.I.S. before his priorities were… changed. It was weird; he could recall both methods of thinking even if they contradicted each other completely. “We need to operate on him immediately,” she went on. “Mr. Stark, do you understand what I’m saying?”
“You want to cut me open. No thanks, I’ll pass,” Tony replied sharply and looked at Steve. “I want to go home.”
“We need to get those things out of you before they kill you,” Steve told him, in his Cap-voice, which meant it was going to happen unless Tony found a way to weasel out of it. He didn’t think he would, in his current condition, and he wanted to do as Steve said, too, which was a new thing. Maybe it had to do with how nice he smelled… Yeah, it was definitely that.
Once he got out of this mess, Tony was going to disable the sensory cells in his nasal cavity and never smell anything ever again.
“Tony,” Bruce called his attention back to the moment, waiting until Tony turned his head to meet his eyes. “You do understand why this has to be done, right? You’re not… still wanting to protect them?”
There was a tense silence while Tony forced himself to think of both alternatives. However, with Davy dead…
He closed his eyes. His head was painfully clear while at the same time feeling just as muddled. The fear was crawling back, though, and he knew there wasn’t an actual argument here. “No,” he answered and opened his eyes, looking at the doctor. “Do it.”
She nodded. “We’ll start preparing you for anesthesia momentarily.”
Tony cringed. “How do you think they’re going to…”
“Ouch,” Clint commented from the foot of the bed. “Do you think they’ll just pull them out?”
Natasha was the one to elbow him this time, although not as hard as Bruce had. “They’ll take whichever route is the safest and least damaging. That’s all you need to think about.” She looked at Tony then. “We’ll be outside -”
“Wait!” Tony jerked up, far as he was allowed before Steve and Bruce forced him back down. “Could you…” He bit his tongue, hard, to keep from saying the rest. He wasn’t being himself, he wasn’t thinking clearly, and he sure as hell wouldn’t ask them to do what he had just almost spilled.
“Could we what?” Natasha pressed.
Tony tried not to look at any of them, which was hard.
“Speak your mind,” Thor encouraged - which was kind of funny because Tony wasn’t sure it was his mind that was at work here. He laughed, then gasped as it triggered another wave of pain.
“Could you stay?” he finally blurted out. “I don’t… I don’t know what they’ll do, and I don’t like that.”
There were looks exchanged, seeking confirmation to see whether they all understood his request the same way.
“We’ll ask the surgeons whether we can do that,” Steve finally offered. “One of us will be with you, though, I promise you that.”
Tony nodded, too embarrassed to say anything else.
When a nurse came in to put him under, Tony saw the others gather at one side of the room, as if standing guard. His nostrils flared, smelling the air as a needle pushed into his skin and he felt calmer immediately, knowing they were there as he slowly drifted off, too tired to actually stay awake.
- - -
When Captain America said he wasn’t going to leave his teammate’s side, there was no room for arguments - from anyone.
Thor had to stay on the far side of the operating room, without Mjolnir, because the electric current he exuded had the tendency to mess up electronic devices and no one wanted that to happen during an operation.
The rest of them were a bit closer but not close enough to get in the way of things. Well, Bruce was seated by Tony’s head where he lay prostate on the table, announcing readings every minute or so for the medical team to acknowledge.
Clint and Natasha watched sharply - too sharply, given the direction of the operation - but it was like a car crash and Tony had asked them to stay with him. Clint wondered if the pheromones worked two ways since they had all bowed to his wish so easily.
Steve was on the other side of the room, attention rapt and unflinching.
When they managed to get to the eggs, everyone held their breath. As the first was extracted, Clint tried to see what it looked like, but the bloody mess on the tray didn’t look like much. Maybe they had accidentally removed something else. However, more of those things kept coming out until all eight were extracted and they started the patch-up work. Tony stayed out cold the entire time and the eggs were sealed in containment as if the medical crew feared they might grow legs - or tentacles - and crawl away.
Clint wished he had brought his arrows and bow, just in case they did just that.
“He’s stable,” the head surgeon noted after they were done. “The injury to internal organs seemed minimal although we’ll see the full effects when he begins to recover.”
Steve nodded, accepting the prognosis and pushed away from the wall. He and Bruce helped to turn Tony to his side and he was wheeled out to a recovery room.
“Let’s get the rest of you checked up,” Bruce noted, giving Steve and Clint a particularly hard look. “Thor, do you need medical attention?”
“I am well,” Thor replied.
“Okay. Thor, Natasha and I stay with Tony while the two of you get checked out.”
Clint mock saluted him then followed Steve in the direction of where they might find available staff to take a look at them now that the biggest show was over.
- - -
Tony was back home in two days. If he hadn’t been so doped up, he would have left after day one, but the drugs they had given him to ward off any infections and complications had been really good and the others had hung around dutifully, entertaining him when he was awake.
Pepper visited frequently, giving him a long hug when he was released and Tony only managed to make her let go when he claimed she would tear the stitches. Pepper blushed, pulled away, then told him to never, ever bring home an alien again. Tony laughed uneasily and said he would do his best, because honestly, he had never really planned anything like it.
His head was so much clearer now - something Fury took advantage of, arriving the day after he got home, telling him he expected a full report once he was recovered. He might have demanded it sooner but Steve was being particularly stiff-lipped about Fury’s visit to begin with and the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. took his leave soon after, leaving the Avengers alone.
Loki had safely been delivered back to Asgard, Tony was told. Undoubtedly it wasn’t the last they would see of him, but at least this time they hadn’t been forced to battle him as well.
Most of the destruction at the Tower had been repaired in the two days he was gone, although the interior still needed some work. Tony avoided looking at the spot on the floor where no signs of battle remained but where he could almost sense a whiff of something…
Whenever that happened, he pressed close to the nearest Avenger, as subtly as he could, taking a good inhale of them instead. Bruce had told him how Davy had controlled him, and how they had devised their own pheromone to counter-act it. Obviously the effects hadn’t been flawless and as intense as expected, but Tony could tell it had worked - and kept working still. If the others noticed, they didn’t mention it. There weren’t any group hugs, but whenever Tony was in the room, they would move closer, as if knowing he wanted it but was fighting himself not to.
Tony knew it would wear off soon, leaving him fully functional and in control of his basic needs. A big part of him looked forward to that in order for all this to be over. After all, it had been a nightmare - even if he hadn’t seen it as such until afterwards. He sure as hell wasn’t going to watch tentacle porn in the same way ever again.
There was a part of him, however, that clung to the last effects of the pheromones and demanded movie nights with the team since it was a convenient way to have them all close to him on the couch, surrounding him as he had never known he needed it, and as long as none of them was complaining, neither was he.
In conclusion, all was once again well in the Avengers Tower - perhaps more so than before, but if someone noticed, they didn’t comment on it.
The End
To crown your reading experience, please enjoy this wonderfully funny piece of art swcajolings ( LJ) contributed to this fic:
→ Info ←
Author: Del Rion (delrion.mail (at) gmail.com)
Fandom: The Avengers (MCU)
Genre: Erotica, drama, suspense
Rating: MA / FRAO
Characters: Bruce Banner (Hulk), Clint Barton (Hawkeye), J.A.R.V.I.S., Nick Fury, Loki, Pepper Potts, Steve Rogers (Captain America), Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow), Tony Stark (Iron Man), Thor
Pairings: Tony/OMC. Brief Tony/OFC/OMC. Implied past Pepper/Tony. OT6 (Bruce/Clint/Natasha/Steve/Thor/Tony) if you squint.
Summary: Tony disappears for days and returns with a rather unlikely companion, whom Tony then viciously protects from anyone who tries to separate them. Thor claims the alien is controlling Tony’s mind - but that is only the first of many problems the Avengers and Tony will be facing.
Complete.
Written for: Tentacle Big Bang (tentaclebigbang)
Also filling the “mind control” square on my card in Trope Bingo’s Round 1.
Artist: swcajolings / ART
Warnings: Sexual content between human/alien males (includes tentacles), brief het and slash threesome content (between humans), dubious consent/rape (sex while drugged/mind-controlled), (unwanted) male pregnancy, abortion, violence.
~ ~ ~
10: Appeasing
Bruce didn’t have time to sit down and get over the disorientation of the transformation.
He had been a few floors down, in search of sedatives, when J.A.R.V.I.S. had informed him a battle had broken out upstairs and that the Hulk might be needed in taking out the alien foe. How that was even possible between Steve and Thor being up there to manage things, Bruce didn’t know, but the sudden rush of concern for Tony had been enough to make the other guy force his way through.
Clearly that hadn’t been a wasted effort, judging from the smear on the floor that threatened to upset his stomach.
Thor was sitting on the floor, holding Tony’s body firmly to his, speaking in soothing tones. Clint looked like someone had tried to strangle him and Natasha was checking on him. Steve had drying blood smeared all over his neck and shoulder, suggesting another injury.
Bruce dismissed all that, knowing it was under control. S.H.I.E.L.D.’s medical unit was on the way, to manage the problem from here on out, but until then he had to do something about Tony’s hitching breaths or he would surely Hulk out again.
Moving forward, he settled down before Thor and the curled up form of his friend and fellow scientist. He reached out, slowly taking a hold of Tony’s wrist, then the other, turning him towards him. Tears stained Tony’s face and the look of horror was not something that belonged on his features. He tried to jerk away, to fight, but Bruce maintained the hold until Tony looked him in the eye and stopped struggling. Some clarity reached the wide, dark eyes - or then the pheromones they had dosed him with began working again, now that the alien was gone and couldn’t replenish his.
“You’re going to be fine,” Bruce reassured Tony. Thor’s hands rested on Tony’s body, rubbing circles on his back, and the touches seemed to have an effect, finally.
“I’m scared,” Tony admitted. “I don’t know… what to do. What to feel. What to think. It’s all so…”
“Messed up?” Bruce suggested.
Tony just nodded then looked up as Steve approached them hesitantly. It looked like Tony was going to break into sobs again and Steve swiftly knelt beside them, taking one of his gloves off and touching Tony’s cheek, pushing at the visible traces of tears. “Does it hurt anywhere?” he asked.
“Besides my heart?” Tony asked and let out a nervous laugh, then closed his eyes briefly and inhaled deeply. “I can… God, you all smell so good.”
Bruce cringed, knowing that was unlikely, at least in his case. He didn’t even want to know where the stickiness on the sole of his left foot had come from. However, it was a sign that their pheromone concoction was working and it was slowly calming Tony down.
“They’re almost here,” Natasha called out and helped Clint up, joining the strange circle. “They’ll… fix you up,” she said and briefly caressed Tony’s hair. He looked at her, following the motion of her hand. Tony was still nervous of Natasha, sometimes, after all these years; perhaps this was how their relationship would have been had she not jabbed him in the neck with a needle, Bruce mused.
Yeah, he had heard about that incident, repeatedly. Tony liked to tell it, even if it showed weakness on his part. It was his reminder of the fact that Natasha - or S.H.I.E.L.D. - shouldn’t be trusted even on a good day. Even if he worked with them.
“Please promise us this is the last time you put us through something as disgusting as this,” Clint noted, voice hoarse.
Tony’s expression flinched, just a bit, and Bruce actually elbowed Clint in the side, making the archer fall back from his crouch. Tony smiled, feeling the motion since Bruce was still holding his hands.
The elevator let out a sound; clearly J.A.R.V.I.S. had released the lock down - or S.H.I.E.L.D. had hacked the AI again, which would send Tony into another spiral of upgrades and revenge-hacking of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s files. Either way, a medical team approached, with a gurney and all, giving the destroyed room a brief look before approaching. “Mr. Stark,” one of them called out, stepping closer.
Tony jerked and leaned away from the man. “I don’t want to go with them,” he said quickly, trying to find one of their eyes to back him up.
“We’ll come with you,” Steve promised. “You’ll be fine.”
Tony swallowed, eyes so wide it was almost comical - but there was nothing funny about the situation. He was entirely too pale and the seizures may have stopped, but the reason for them was still there, inside him. “Are you sure?” Tony finally asked, looking at Steve.
“Yes,” Steve nodded and climbed to his feet with some difficulty. “I’ll be with you the entire way to the hospital. Bruce, too,” he added, seeing as Bruce still held Tony’s hands.
Tony nodded rigidly and started to get up. Thor and Bruce helped him along. They didn’t make him lie down before they got to the S.H.I.E.L.D.’s version of an ambulance, knowing how Tony hated appearing weak in front of people. The others would follow in the Quinjet, meeting them at S.H.I.E.L.D.’s private hospital.
Bruce leaned against the wall as the car drove away from the Tower, meeting Steve’s eyes. “We did okay,” he mused.
Steve nodded then glanced at Tony who had closed his eyes and appeared to be asleep for the time being, breathing shallow and erratic as if he were incredibly uneasy even while resting. Bruce held the hand closest to him a bit more tightly and hoped they weren’t too late.
- - -
When Tony stirred, the ceiling was moving and the lights were too bright. He panicked, jerking up, trying to sit, but a hand pressed him back down, adamant on his chest. He looked at it then relaxed a bit, recognizing the red glove and the blue that followed it. “Cap,” he murmured.
“I’m here,” Steve’s voice replied. “We’re all here.”
Tony settled down and they turned the gurney after a bit, passing a doorway, then stopped. He looked around, finding himself in a room, in a hospital. He didn’t like hospitals and wasn’t going to start now. “I want to go home,” he protested. “I’m fine.”
“You have alien eggs inside you,” Bruce’s voice reminded him.
“How could I forget?” Tony mused, wondering about it. In the middle of… everything… it wasn’t that surprising, but the cramps were coming back and he was tired of them, of the pain in his abdomen and the throwing up. And the seizures; those had been awful, especially when trapped inside the suit.
He forced himself to look around the room, finding the other Avengers there. Tony counted them carefully, sniffing and finding each smell as well, which he wasn’t going to let freak him out right now. “Where’s Loki?” he asked. He was sure he had seen him at the Tower.
“In S.H.I.E.L.D. custody,” Steve reassured him. “Hopefully he’ll still be there when we’re done here.”
Loki was good at convenient disappearing acts - convenient for him, anyway.
A woman walked in, pace crisp, face grim. “We’ve received preliminary test results as well as the data you collected,” she said. Tony guessed she was referring to whatever tests he had run with J.A.R.V.I.S. before his priorities were… changed. It was weird; he could recall both methods of thinking even if they contradicted each other completely. “We need to operate on him immediately,” she went on. “Mr. Stark, do you understand what I’m saying?”
“You want to cut me open. No thanks, I’ll pass,” Tony replied sharply and looked at Steve. “I want to go home.”
“We need to get those things out of you before they kill you,” Steve told him, in his Cap-voice, which meant it was going to happen unless Tony found a way to weasel out of it. He didn’t think he would, in his current condition, and he wanted to do as Steve said, too, which was a new thing. Maybe it had to do with how nice he smelled… Yeah, it was definitely that.
Once he got out of this mess, Tony was going to disable the sensory cells in his nasal cavity and never smell anything ever again.
“Tony,” Bruce called his attention back to the moment, waiting until Tony turned his head to meet his eyes. “You do understand why this has to be done, right? You’re not… still wanting to protect them?”
There was a tense silence while Tony forced himself to think of both alternatives. However, with Davy dead…
He closed his eyes. His head was painfully clear while at the same time feeling just as muddled. The fear was crawling back, though, and he knew there wasn’t an actual argument here. “No,” he answered and opened his eyes, looking at the doctor. “Do it.”
She nodded. “We’ll start preparing you for anesthesia momentarily.”
Tony cringed. “How do you think they’re going to…”
“Ouch,” Clint commented from the foot of the bed. “Do you think they’ll just pull them out?”
Natasha was the one to elbow him this time, although not as hard as Bruce had. “They’ll take whichever route is the safest and least damaging. That’s all you need to think about.” She looked at Tony then. “We’ll be outside -”
“Wait!” Tony jerked up, far as he was allowed before Steve and Bruce forced him back down. “Could you…” He bit his tongue, hard, to keep from saying the rest. He wasn’t being himself, he wasn’t thinking clearly, and he sure as hell wouldn’t ask them to do what he had just almost spilled.
“Could we what?” Natasha pressed.
Tony tried not to look at any of them, which was hard.
“Speak your mind,” Thor encouraged - which was kind of funny because Tony wasn’t sure it was his mind that was at work here. He laughed, then gasped as it triggered another wave of pain.
“Could you stay?” he finally blurted out. “I don’t… I don’t know what they’ll do, and I don’t like that.”
There were looks exchanged, seeking confirmation to see whether they all understood his request the same way.
“We’ll ask the surgeons whether we can do that,” Steve finally offered. “One of us will be with you, though, I promise you that.”
Tony nodded, too embarrassed to say anything else.
When a nurse came in to put him under, Tony saw the others gather at one side of the room, as if standing guard. His nostrils flared, smelling the air as a needle pushed into his skin and he felt calmer immediately, knowing they were there as he slowly drifted off, too tired to actually stay awake.
- - -
When Captain America said he wasn’t going to leave his teammate’s side, there was no room for arguments - from anyone.
Thor had to stay on the far side of the operating room, without Mjolnir, because the electric current he exuded had the tendency to mess up electronic devices and no one wanted that to happen during an operation.
The rest of them were a bit closer but not close enough to get in the way of things. Well, Bruce was seated by Tony’s head where he lay prostate on the table, announcing readings every minute or so for the medical team to acknowledge.
Clint and Natasha watched sharply - too sharply, given the direction of the operation - but it was like a car crash and Tony had asked them to stay with him. Clint wondered if the pheromones worked two ways since they had all bowed to his wish so easily.
Steve was on the other side of the room, attention rapt and unflinching.
When they managed to get to the eggs, everyone held their breath. As the first was extracted, Clint tried to see what it looked like, but the bloody mess on the tray didn’t look like much. Maybe they had accidentally removed something else. However, more of those things kept coming out until all eight were extracted and they started the patch-up work. Tony stayed out cold the entire time and the eggs were sealed in containment as if the medical crew feared they might grow legs - or tentacles - and crawl away.
Clint wished he had brought his arrows and bow, just in case they did just that.
“He’s stable,” the head surgeon noted after they were done. “The injury to internal organs seemed minimal although we’ll see the full effects when he begins to recover.”
Steve nodded, accepting the prognosis and pushed away from the wall. He and Bruce helped to turn Tony to his side and he was wheeled out to a recovery room.
“Let’s get the rest of you checked up,” Bruce noted, giving Steve and Clint a particularly hard look. “Thor, do you need medical attention?”
“I am well,” Thor replied.
“Okay. Thor, Natasha and I stay with Tony while the two of you get checked out.”
Clint mock saluted him then followed Steve in the direction of where they might find available staff to take a look at them now that the biggest show was over.
- - -
Tony was back home in two days. If he hadn’t been so doped up, he would have left after day one, but the drugs they had given him to ward off any infections and complications had been really good and the others had hung around dutifully, entertaining him when he was awake.
Pepper visited frequently, giving him a long hug when he was released and Tony only managed to make her let go when he claimed she would tear the stitches. Pepper blushed, pulled away, then told him to never, ever bring home an alien again. Tony laughed uneasily and said he would do his best, because honestly, he had never really planned anything like it.
His head was so much clearer now - something Fury took advantage of, arriving the day after he got home, telling him he expected a full report once he was recovered. He might have demanded it sooner but Steve was being particularly stiff-lipped about Fury’s visit to begin with and the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. took his leave soon after, leaving the Avengers alone.
Loki had safely been delivered back to Asgard, Tony was told. Undoubtedly it wasn’t the last they would see of him, but at least this time they hadn’t been forced to battle him as well.
Most of the destruction at the Tower had been repaired in the two days he was gone, although the interior still needed some work. Tony avoided looking at the spot on the floor where no signs of battle remained but where he could almost sense a whiff of something…
Whenever that happened, he pressed close to the nearest Avenger, as subtly as he could, taking a good inhale of them instead. Bruce had told him how Davy had controlled him, and how they had devised their own pheromone to counter-act it. Obviously the effects hadn’t been flawless and as intense as expected, but Tony could tell it had worked - and kept working still. If the others noticed, they didn’t mention it. There weren’t any group hugs, but whenever Tony was in the room, they would move closer, as if knowing he wanted it but was fighting himself not to.
Tony knew it would wear off soon, leaving him fully functional and in control of his basic needs. A big part of him looked forward to that in order for all this to be over. After all, it had been a nightmare - even if he hadn’t seen it as such until afterwards. He sure as hell wasn’t going to watch tentacle porn in the same way ever again.
There was a part of him, however, that clung to the last effects of the pheromones and demanded movie nights with the team since it was a convenient way to have them all close to him on the couch, surrounding him as he had never known he needed it, and as long as none of them was complaining, neither was he.
In conclusion, all was once again well in the Avengers Tower - perhaps more so than before, but if someone noticed, they didn’t comment on it.
The End
To crown your reading experience, please enjoy this wonderfully funny piece of art swcajolings ( LJ) contributed to this fic:
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