"Why did I let you talk me into this?" Clint asks with a groan, smacking his head against the kitchen table.
Natasha leans back in her chair, lolling her head back and closing her eyes. "Because you love me?"
"Not anymore," Clint says, though he clearly doesn't mean it. She's dragged him into much worse situations and their friendship has survived. This certainly isn't going to break it. "I still can't believe Fury left you on babysitting duty."
"Especially when there's no baby to babysit," Natasha adds. She glances at the clock on the microwave. It's well past three o'clock in the morning. Where is he?
"At least it's any easy job," Clint says.
"It was until Stark stuck me on kitchen duty," Natasha deadpans. Loki only ever seems to come out at night and Tony was getting sick of JARVIS waking him up every night, so now they're taking turns staying up all night to keep an eye on him. Tony very graciously took last night (because Natasha made him), but now it's her turn and she's absolutely miserable.
Clint nods sympathetically. "It's like a stakeout but without the fun."
"Really," she agrees. She covers her mouth with her hand and yawns, and Clint does the same shortly after. "Hey, thanks for spending the night with me. I know this isn't exactly your idea of a good time."
Clint scoffs. "Are you kidding me? Hanging out with you is always my idea of a good time."
Natasha smiles. That's why he's her best friend. He'll put up with anything for her.
"Ms. Romanoff, Mr. Barton, Loki has opened his door," JARVIS says.
"Finally," Clint mutters. "Let's get this over with."
They wait in silence for Loki to show up. It takes a few minutes, but, sure enough, he walks into the kitchen and straight for the freezer...
And then he pauses, and it's clear he's noticed Clint.
"Oh, my god," Clint whispers, and he bursts out laughing. Natasha doesn't even know what he's laughing about, but it makes her laugh, too. "Look at him! Look at the little prison uniform!"
Loki looks down at his clothes, and, with a glow of green light, they change back to what he'd been wearing when he tried to take over the world.
"Oh, now he looks like he's going to Comic-Con!" Clint says, and Natasha laughs even harder.
Loki just shakes his head to himself and heads to the freezer without a word.
"How's it feel, Loki?" Clint asks with a smirk. "You're stuck on Earth now. Karma's a bitch, huh?"
Loki clenches his jaw and turns around to look at him. "I may have lost my freedom, but my mind is still my own. Am I truly in a worse position than you?"
Natasha knows even before Clint moves that, if left unchecked, this could end badly — and, realistically, Clint will probably get the worst of it. She puts a hand on his arm, a gentle reminder to hold back. "It's not worth it," she says quietly.
Clint clenches his teeth, but he doesn't get up, just glaring at Loki with a murderous glint in his eye.
Unphased, Loki turns his attention back to the freezer. He pulls out a bag of chicken nuggets and starts laying them out on a plate.
"Are those dinosaur chicken nuggets?" Clint asks, and any anger he may have felt a few moments ago has been replaced by pure amusement.
"Mm," Natasha hums. "Tony has decided to treat this like he's babysitting a bratty child, so..." She gestures to him vaguely. "Dinosaur nuggets."
Clint bursts out laughing, lowering his head against the table and curling in on himself, and it almost makes Natasha laugh, too. She didn't find the dinosaur nuggets funny herself, but Clint's reaction might change that.
Loki ignores them and puts the nuggets in the microwave.
"So this is all he does?" Clint asks. "He just comes out here every night and eats his little nuggies?"
"According to Tony, yeah, pretty much," Natasha says.
"Oh, this poor guy," Clint says, but the look on his face makes it clear that he has no sympathy for him. "And then he goes back to hibernating in his room?"
Natasha nods. "Until tomorrow night, when he does it all again."
"What a miserable way to live," Clint remarks. "I love it."
Loki turns to face him with the roll of his eyes. "Why are you here?"
"To laugh at you, mostly," Clint says. "Which you're making very easy, so thanks for that."
"But you don't want to be here," Loki says. "So why are you?"
"Because," Natasha says, "we don't trust you enough to leave you alone."
"You don't trust me to heat chicken," Loki deadpans.
"We don't trust you with free reign of the tower while everyone's asleep," Natasha says.
"In case you forgot," Clint adds, "last time you were left to your own devices, you kind of tried to take over the planet."
"In case you forgot," Loki says, his voice dripping in sarcasm, "I can't do that from in here."
"You couldn't do it from out there, either," Clint quips, and Natasha smirks.
Ignoring that, Loki says, "I think we would all be happier if we left each other alone. You could go to sleep and I could get my food in peace."
"Take it up with Stark," Natasha says.
The flippancy of that response seems to annoy him, but he nods once, and that seems to be the end of it.
"Oh, also..." Natasha hops to her feet. "He got you a water bottle so you could stop refilling that cup every night." She opens a few different cabinets until she finds the water bottle, then tosses it to him. He catches it with ease and twists the cap off, then goes to the sink to fill it up.
This also makes Clint burst out laughing, which does nothing but remind Natasha that he and Tony have the same immature sense of humor. "Is that Perry the Platypus on his water bottle?"
"Like I said," Natasha says. "Stark's taken to treating him like a child."
"Where did he even find a Perry the Platypus water bottle?" Clint asks.
"I don't know; I didn't ask."
"I love it," Clint says. "This is better than the dino nuggets."
"Careful, Barton," Natasha says with a teasing smile. "You keep talking like that, I might have to find you one, too."
"Ooh, I like that idea!" Clint says with a grin. "How about it, Loki? We can have matching Perry the Platypus water bottles! Wouldn't that be fun?"
It seems Loki's finally had enough, because he turns around to look at them, his frustration clearly showing on his face. "Stop talking down to me, Barton," he says. "I may be a prisoner in this building, but I'm still a god. While you're here, you remain at my mercy."
Clint snorts. "Yeah, okay, buddy. Whatever you say."
Natasha raises an eyebrow. While she does enjoy watching Clint bully a literal god, she is hyper aware of the fact that he could probably kill any of them at any moment. He's been quiet enough since he got here that she'd begun to think he wasn't much of a risk, but this is a good reminder that there's always that chance. Should Clint really be pushing it like this?
Fortunately, that reaction doesn't seem to bother Loki too much. The microwave goes off, which takes his attention away from them and to his food. He twists the cap on his water bottle, then pulls his nuggets out of the microwave.
"Alright now," Clint says mockingly, like he's speaking to a child. "You go back to your room and eat your little nug-nugs."
Loki drops his plate and water bottle on the counter. A knife flies out of the cutlery holder on the other side of the room, landing in his now-outstretched hand, and in an instant, the sharp edge is resting against Clint's throat. His eyes widen, staring down at the blade with genuine fear.
Natasha slides her chair away, instinctively reaching for the gun in her holster, but she doesn't pull it out. She doesn't want to make the wrong move right now, and threatening the god that could kill her friend with just the flick of his wrist might be the wrong move.
Loki smirks, a sadistic glint in his eye. "Oh, what I wouldn't give to just slice this across your throat."
He jerks his arm the slightest bit, almost like he's going to do it, and Natasha's heart stops. The second or two that it takes to see that Clint is okay is the longest moment of her life. A small trickle of blood slips down his throat, but it could just as easily be from Clint flinching as from Loki's fake-out.
Natasha swallows hard. "JARVIS? Get Tony."
"Waking him up now, Ms. Romanoff," JARVIS says.
Loki pulls his arm away and tosses the knife into the sink with a clatter. Natasha immediately rushes to Clint's side, and she slides her sleeve over her hand and presses it against the cut on Clint's throat to stop the bleeding. It's not a large cut by any means, nor is it bleeding very much so he must not have hit an artery, but it's still a wound to the neck and she's not going to just leave it.
She looks over at Loki with narrowed eyes, but he doesn't even glance their way, just picking up his water bottle and his plate of nuggets and walking out of the room without another word.
Natasha turns her attention back to Clint. "Hey, you okay?"
Clint gives a small nod. "For a second there, I really thought I was a dead man."
"You piss him off again and you might be," Natasha says.
"Yeah..." Clint gently moves her hand away and puts his own in its place. He sucks in a breath through his teeth when he touches it, but he recovers quickly. "I really didn't think he was going to do that."
"He's a murderer, Clint," Natasha deadpans. "Did you really think he was above that?"
Clint shrugs sheepishly. "He was eating dinosaur chicken nuggets."
"You're an idiot," Natasha tells him.
Clint smiles awkwardly. "But I'm your idiot?"
She shakes her head, a fond smile on her lips that she just can't hide. "Don't remind me."