The… what could charitably be described as a team gathered in the bridge. The others looked as worn as Natasha felt. Fury, Hill, Rogers, Stark, Thor, Coulson… something niggled at her mind. Where was Harry? "Agent Barton is recovering. I'll assess his mental state when he wakes." She'd knocked Clint out, hoping it would fix whatever Loki had done to him. That was all it was, though, hope. "What's our status?"
"We aren't crashing." Coulson noted.
"I assume that's the only good news." The grim faces of her companions confirmed her suspicion.
"Loki escaped." Thor said grimly. "When I went to his cell, the entire room was destroyed. He must have gotten away."
"No sign of Banner." Coulson added "He fell… but I assume that won't kill him."
Natasha's attention, however, had shifted to Hill. She'd gone pale when Thor had mentioned the fate of the detainment room "Hill, what is it?" The twisting feeling in her gut was given voice "Where's Harry?"
"Ha- Potter's vitals cut off during the fight. No sign of him anywhere. He was last seen going to detainment."
The suppressed grief in Hill's voice was an echo of her own, as the revelation hit her like a bullet. The blood drained from her face, her heart turned to ice in her chest. "No." The word was barely even a whisper, her throat couldn't manage anything more than that.
She'd spent the past year lying to herself. He was just a fling. She barely knew him. It was better for both of them to move on. But in one moment of clarity she saw that in their brief time together they'd made a genuine human connection- something rare and precious, something that could have been so much more. And it was gone, forever.
"God." Steve uttered, looking almost haunted. It wasn't his first time loosing someone, she knew, but that didn't make it any easier to take. Stark, meanwhile, flinched and turned away, staring numbly into the corner.
No one else said a word, and the silence began to close in on her- oppressive, suffocating... she needed to get out of here. She couldn't afford to let herself be weak in front of them. There was only one person, one living person, who she could imagine confiding in.
-----
"I'm sorry, Nat." It was the first thing he said after processing the existential crisis of having someone control his mind and grounding himself. She didn't need to be told what he was sorry about, she had a feeling.
"It wasn't your fault."
"I was there." Clint shook his head. "Kid almost got him, would have dropped him right out of the sky and ended this whole thing if I hadn't been there."
Nat smiled bittersweetly "It was Loki. Not you." She paused "I'm going to kill him." There was little emotion in that. It was a cold statement of intent. She would kill Loki; it was personal now.
"Get in line." Clint grimaced.
The two sat in contemplative silence for a moment. "Are you okay, Clint?"
"No." He took some time to make sense of his thoughts "Have you ever had someone take your brain and play? Pull you out and send something else in?"
"You know I do."
Another long moment of silence. "When this is over, come down to visit. See Laura, the kids."
Natasha rolled her eyes "You think I need someone watching out for me?"
"Everyone does, Nat." He put a hand on her shoulder "We're all fucked up, and the day isn't over yet."
Natasha nodded, reading in between the lines. His offer wasn't just for her… it was for him as well. "It's a deal."
-----
Instead of being quick and ending with a splat, Harry's descent ended up being… practice. He'd finally, finally gotten another spell to work, and gotten a pretty strong sign of how to unlock more of his magic. Memories and emotion, like a patronus charm. That didn't mean he was any good with the spell, however. It took trial and error to finesse it so that he was falling gently rather than plummeting to his death or hovering motionless in the air.
This time drifting down to earth also gave him time to think. How was he going to let everyone know he was alive? What was he going to do? What was Loki going to do? Was everyone else alright? He spotted the Hulk tumbling to earth not far from him, and he did his best to guide himself in his general direction, which was also toward the city.
As he glided to ground level, he grimaced at the thought of being noticed. He was in the city proper and he didn't want that kind of notoriety, yet it seemed very likely that someone would record him.
That concern was quickly dismissed when the sky, quite literally opened up in front of him. An alien army was invading, pouring out of what looked like a portal in the sky. Hundreds of small hovercraft, along with massive flying leviathans.
Shit.
He started running, dodging the rush of people heading in the opposite direction. It was looking like a hopeless cause, that he'd never get there in time, when he heard the gunning of a motorbike engine. "Hey, Harry! Need a ride?"
-----
It was looking bad.
They had rallied, after Harry's death. Grim faced and determined, all of them- Natasha, Clint, Thor, Stark, Rogers. They had silently pledged to avenge him.
They were the Avengers. Heh.
But it wasn't that simple. They'd descended on New York to find it in utter chaos. Loki at the head of an army of aliens and… large space whales. They were in the process of wrecking the city and easily dispatching what meager resistance local forces could provide. Their team had certainly proven a match for the invaders, but they could only last for so long, and Nat had a feeling that this was just the tip of the spear.
Help, it turned out, was on the way.
"Well, this all seems horrible." Banner said, dismounting his motorbike and revealing the person sitting behind him. Harry. Looking no worse for wear after supposedly dying. Harry. Harry. Harry. Natasha took several aggressive steps toward him, before catching herself.
"So, not dead." She said, resisting the urge to grab him. She wasn't sure if she wanted to shake him for being so reckless with his own life by confronting Loki alone, or the hug him and reassure herself that he was alive.
"Err, sorry?"
"Stark, we got them." Rogers said.
"Banner?"
"And Potter."
Stark chuckled "I knew he was holding out on us. Tell Banner to suit up, I'm bringing the party to you." Stark rounded the building and rocketed towards him, hot on his heels was a Leviathan.
"I… I don't see how that's a party."
"Dr. Banner, now might be a really good time for you to get angry."
"That's my secret Captain… I'm always angry."
Banner transformed, crushing the Leviathan's face and forcing it to flip vertical. Its armor shifted and parted, allowing Stark to fire a missile at its weak point.
It was highly effective. Fire ripped apart the beast and burst outward but parted around them. Harry had said something Natasha couldn't have hoped to pick up over the explosion, and now stood with his hand outstretch, a look of concentration on his face. A nearly transparent shield was protecting them from the fire and debris.
Then they were standing- all seven of them- back-to-back. It was just them against the entire army that surrounded them, but she felt invincible.
-----
The battle had been a marathon, a slog. None of the individual Chitauri were particularly difficult for them to dispatch on their own, but there were so many of them. It wasn't exactly the best learning environment, but he had no choice but to improvise.
Protego, by necessity, had been the next spell he performed. Fire was rushing towards them, and there was literally no time to hesitate. He immersed himself in the memory of teaching the DA students the spell. His pride at helping them defend themselves, satisfaction at teaching them something that could actually help them, something that Umbridge would never do. The emotions filled him- Protectiveness, comradery, friendship – instilling him with an iron resolve to protect his teammates.
It worked, and what's more, it worked a treat against the alien's gunfire, deflecting the energy shots just as it would a spell. He found that as long as he remained focus and emotionally centered he didn't even need to vocalize the spell, once he got a hang of it.
Expelliarmus also came quickly to him- it was a familiar spell, perhaps his signature spell back in his old world. He imagined that duel with Malfoy in his second year where he learned the spell, how much of a fool Lockhart had been. He remembered that desperate 'duel' with Voldemort in the graveyard- the spell had saved his life. He remembered using it on Stan Shunpike, drawing attention to himself during his escape from Privet Drive. Desperation, bravery, mercy. It worked, and he was able to rapidly disarm a small group of the invaders and send them flying back.
Acio also worked a treat. He remembered the time it had taken to learn the spell in preparation for the first task. Then the elation of hopping on his broom and outflying the dragon. Determination, nerve, exhilaration. He found that dispelling rubble towards his opponents to be a good strategy, or just throwing the Chitauri themselves back into a wall. Keeping his distance was key for him. He'd gotten into a tough spot when one of them got close. He couldn't really overpower the aliens physically, leading to a clumsy brawl that ended with Natasha dispatching his attacker with a shot to the head.
"Are you hurt?" She asked, offering a hand.
He took it gratefully, but grimace at the fact that he let himself fall into that situation "Only my pride." He responded dryly. He'd taken care to stay more aware of his surroundings after that- but fatigue was beginning to set in. Wandless magic was far more exhausting, both physically and mentally, than he was used to. The others were struggling as well, he could see. Clint had run out of arrows and was forced to take cover in a building. Steve and Natasha weren't wounded, per se, but had clearly seen better days. Thor, at least, was going strong.
The solution hadn't been to kill all the invaders, it had been to close the portal. Natasha had been clever enough to figure out how- with Loki's staff- and Stark had been recklessly self-sacrificing enough to carry a nuke right through the portal. Not only had he just saved them all from being nuked, but the missile had clearly hit something on the other side of that portal.
Which was why the man was plummeting to Earth, apparently unconscious. Fortuitously, Harry had some very recent experience in halting a precipitous fall. His magic reached out and cloaked itself around the man. He held it, slowly lowering Stark to the ground, until his arm shook from the strain. When Stark's body was perhaps half a foot above the ground, Harry finally let go, allowing him to fall with a thud.
Rogers, Thor, and the Hulk had clustered around. Thor didn't hesitate to rip the helmet off Stark's face. Was he unconscious, or dead? Harry was about to chance a reneverate, even though he had no idea if he could cast the spell or not, when the Hulk roared.
Amazingly, the noise not only made Harry jump out of his own skin, it startled Stark awake.
"Alright. Hey. Alright. Good job, guys. Let's just not come in tomorrow. Let's just take a day. Have you ever tried shawarma? There's a shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don't know what it is, but I wanna try it."
Clearly, he was fine.
-----
Their day wasn't over yet. The Chitauri army that had already made it through the portal was alive and fighting, though it didn't take too long for them to realize that they were cut off and no help was coming. Many scattered, those with hovercraft fleeing from the cities, while others scampering underground. Others held out in wrecked buildings, facing off against the arriving military forces until the Avengers could arrive to finish the job. Some surrendered outright, and the military was faced with the uncomfortable situation of taking the alien invaders prisoners of war.
Loki himself was easy enough to collect, what was more frustrating arguing with a bunch of assholes from Shield about who got what. Harry was determined to get access to that scepter, but he was annoyed to be told that there several levels of bureaucracy and paperwork he had to wade through before that could happen. They'd never even told him about the tesseract, he didn't trust them for a minute with that scepter. He regretfully watched a team of agents walk off with it, while affirming to himself that he would figure out the object's mysteries one day.
Then there was shawarma.
After all their earlier banter, they took the meal in silence. Each one of them was entirely exhausted and just needed to decompress. The day ranked as one of the most draining days of his life- top 10 certainly. Not as bad as the Department of Mysteries, the Battle of Hogwarts, or watching Voldemort return in that graveyard, but surely up there.
Finally, the exhausted group returned to Stark Tower. The destruction around them was immense, and Harry was quietly wondering if he could get reparo to work. But it was late, and the enormity of what would be needed for the recovery effort daunted him.
There would be repairs, rebuilding, meetings and press conferences- it was a whole new world. A world that he could deal with tomorrow.
Stark had taken the liberty of having Jarvis assign them rooms, after extracting a promise from Harry for some 'playtime' to test his powers out in the lab. Harry made no delay in claiming his own room, heading straight for long, hot shower. He was bruised and sore, and the hot water felt so nice as he let the tension ease out from his body.
He'd survived. They'd saved the world. He'd done more magic today than he'd done in the entirety of his last two years. He'd made new… friends? Allies? Coworkers? Exactly which wasn't quite clear to him.
He'd seen Natasha again.
That thought lingered in his mind. They'd made plans to talk later, clear the air, and that weighed on his mind certainly. But along with that came the memories of those blissful nights he'd spent with her- which kindled his arousal.
He shut the water off and wrapped a towel around his waist, trying to push those thoughts to the side. He'd been conflicted about how to look back at those nights. He felt weird enjoying the memory when his relationship with Nat was nonexistent. Yet every time he pleasured himself, he couldn't stop his mind from drifting to her, and when it did, he never lasted long.
Harry stepped out of the bathroom, and froze in shock. As if he'd summoned her, the object of his thoughts was right there, in the bedroom, still clothed in a battered Shield uniform.
"Nat." He murmured, the surprise lowering his defenses.
"Harry." She replied, breathless. She looked as shocked as he felt, which was odd, considering she was in his room. Or perhaps it wasn't shock, her eyes were wide as they trailed up and down his body, and her cheeks were flushed. Belatedly, he realized he wasn't quite clothed.
"Err, did you want to talk?" He asked, confusion taking over.
She blinked, recalibrating, before muttering "Stark."
"Huh?"
"Let me guess, he told you this was your room too?" Harry nodded mutely in response. "That jackass. He set us up." Despite regaining her composure, her eyes continued to stray lower.
"Ah." Harry said "I guess he wants us to have that talk too?"
For a moment she was incredulous, but only a moment, before she muttered "Fuck it." And launched herself at him. Harry barely had time to react before her lips claimed his, and any hesitation was quickly driven away by the passion in her kiss. She was ravenous, kissing him like a woman dying of thirst. She moaned deeply while her tongue claimed his mouth, and then pushed him forcefully back into bed.
She panted and looked hungrily down at him. Harry stared back up at her with wide eyes as his mind struggled to catch up. "Wait. It wasn't… just a job for you?" He said, in an embarrassingly small voice.
The incredulous look was back "Is that what you thought?" She asked "Seriously?"
"Err, yeah?"
She shook her head. "You have no idea." She breathed "How much I want this. How often I've thought about doing this." Her hand cupped his crotch through the towel. "It… it wasn't the job. I was supposed to flirt with you, lead you along, not fuck you. I couldn't help myself."
"Oh." Harry moaned "Now I wish we talked sooner."
"Enough talking." She tugged the towel off him. "Hmm." She hummed as she admired his erection. "Let me make things up to you."
Harry gasped as she knelt between his legs, gripping him by the base of his shaft. "I-ohhh!" His mind went blank as she engulfed him, unable to focus on anything but the intense pleasure of having her mouth around him, sucking gently, her tongue swirling around his cockhead. "Oh! Oooh! Uhhnn!" He moaned, rendered completely helpless by her talented mouth and tongue.
And then she pulled back with a chuckle. "Poor boy." She cooed, pressing a kiss to his swollen cockhead "You haven't gotten any since we last met, have you?." In response, Harry could only whine plaintively while she teased him with her hand. "Did you like that, babe?"
"Yesss." Harry moaned "I did! I really- Uhn!" Words deserted him again as she engulfed him, this time taking him down to the hilt. She'd taken him with ease, and when she looked up at him, it was with a look of sexual triumph. She stayed there for a while, sucking and bobbing on him, forcing Harry to curse, moan, and clench the sheets in his fists. He was completely hers, a slave to her sucking mouth, at the whim of her tongue. Soon he was begging her- he was close, he was close, he was close.
But just before he crossed that point of no return, she pulled back. She knew what she was doing, she knew. "You taste delicious, babe." She murmured. "I should have done this sooner." She then swallowed him again, but only briefly, coming back up and licking her lips desirously.
Harry moaned torturously at her teasing treatment, begging "Please!" But this only served to stroke Natasha's feminine ego as she favored him a cocky lopsided smile.
"You can't resist me, can you?" She taunted "Are you addicted to my mouth, babe?"
"I- uh." Harry fumbled, before moaning again as she pressed a kiss to him, sweeping her tongue across his frenulum. "Uhhn! Yes! Fuck! I'm fucking addicting to you." He gasped as she pulled back, a satisfied smile on her face. "I can't stop thinking about you. You're so fucking perfect! I just… AHN!"
Her smile only grew at his praise, and she enthusiastically engulfed him once again. This time she didn't let up, not even when he warned her that he was close. Her eyes just met his, fierce and determined him, challenging him, insisting that he let go, give in to her mouth. Then, with a cry, he came, spilling into her mouth. Without flinching, she swallowed his essence, moaning and sucking until he had nothing left to give.
She stood up, gazing admiringly at him… what she'd done to him- he was spent and gasping on the bed. "You're incredible." He murmured. It felt so good, after a day like this, just to let go and immerse himself in her. The struggles of the day and worries about tomorrow felt a little more distant now.
"I know." She said, unzipping and pulling off her uniform. She was sweaty, grimy, and bruised, but she was still gorgeous. His arousal flickered back to life when she removed her bra- his soft cock stirring in interest. Her fingers brushed against him, causing him to gasp and his cock to begin to twitch to hardness.
But then she stepped back. "Stay." She told him as she walked to the bathroom.
"What are you doing?" He asked, a little plaintive.
"You already got your shower. If we're going to fuck, I'm going to get myself cleaned up first."
-----
Natasha silently cursed herself as soon as she left the room. Damn Stark for setting them up like that. Damn Harry for being so damn… irresistible. And damn herself for letting her vagina take over the minute she saw his bare chest. She had a half dozen excuses prepared for herself- it was an escape from the stress of the day, she'd thought he'd died, she hadn't had even had sex since she'd been with him... but she couldn't fool herself anymore.
She shivered. The things he did to her. She'd thought of him far more often than she'd care to admit over the past months, and very often late at night, alone in bed. The minute she saw him, wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, she was a goner. The taste of his sex, the feeling of his twitching in her mouth, his noises of pleasure- it was all delicious to her, stoking a needy heat in her cunt that had her clenching her thighs together. By the time he was pumping his seed into her mouth, she was perilously close to popping herself.
Natasha turned the shower on, and turned the temperature ice cold. She didn't want this to turn into their last two encounters- a session of incredibly hot sex, without any attempt to talk things out. Were things alright between them? What were they? Where did they go from here?
But she was in no state to ask or answer those questions. If she'd stayed in that room with him a moment longer, she'd have giving into the hunger in her core and mounted him. So she punished herself with the lashing of a bitingly cold shower, even though the warm water might have felt lovely for her aching muscles, even though she would love to dip her fingers to her sex, or better yet saunter back into that room and fuck that man properly.
Then, to her surprise, the door opened, and the curtains parted behind her. "Harry!" She bit out "I told you-"
"That you wanted to shower before we had sex." He interrupted, sporting a smirk "You didn't say anything about me helping with that shower."
"Harry Potter I-" She turned around to face him, but couldn't quite manage to protest when faced with the specimen before her.
"Cold shower?" He grinned, stepping closer to her "Feeling a little too hot, are we?" And damn her if she just didn't just gawk at him, blood rushing to her cheeks and to her heated core despite the cold water. And then he reached behind her to turn the temperature up, which didn't help her predicament, not a bit. She reached for him and parted her thighs invitingly as the heat spread like a fog through her mind.
"Well? Turn around." He told her lightly, startling her from her trance.
Natasha blinked in confusion "What?"
"I'm going to wash you, Nat." He said, grabbing a bottle of body wash. Something inside her tittered at what sort of fresh torment he was about to put her through, but really, she couldn't wait to find out.
So she let him lather her back, and moaned softly as his strong hands began to work their magic. Surprisingly, and frustratingly, this wasn't merely an excuse to grope her or get her off. It was a massage as much as anything, he worked the tense muscles at her shoulders and then down her back. "Enjoying yourself?" He murmured in her ear, prompting her to respond with a moan of yes, which opened to floodgates for more moans and noises of pleasure.
He did massage her ass, but didn't linger inordinately. His next target was thighs, which was no less torturous an experience. If it weren't for the shower, she was sure her arousal would be dripping down them. She was so hot, and swollen, and needy, if only his hands would move up just a little, press into her aching cunt, it would be so easy for her to cum.
"Alright, turn around." He told her, his voice gravely with desire. She didn't need to be told twice, and immediately flung herself at him, plunging her tongue into his mouth, pressing their bodies together, and acutely feeling his erection against her abdomen. She was just about to hook her leg up to give her better access to his hardness when he drew her back- arms at her sides.
"You fucking tease." She cursed in frustration, and he chuckled.
"Pot, meet kettle." He returned. "Besides, I think you'll like this." She knew she would, she knew she did, which was why she gave in every time. His hands swept across her skin, massaging her breasts before moving lower. Unexpectedly, he knelt down and just the sight of him in that position provoked such a thrill in her that she could help a strangled moan.
He was, at last done teasing. She lasted an embarrassingly short amount of time once he actually set to work on her. Only a few seconds of his tongue on her clit has her staggering, shaking, and moaning "Oh fuck! Ooooh fuck! Ooooh FUCK!"
It was his turn to flash her a look of triumph while she reeled in the aftermath of her climax, and despite her earlier determination for tonight to go differently, she knew that nothing would stop them from fucking each other senseless.