"If you really expect me to sleep with you, you're going to have to explain it to me again," Barnes said.
"You weren't listening when they told you?"
"Not really," Barnes admitted, and didn't even have the grace to look embarrassed about it. (Not that Loki had expected much in the way of grace. Not from a human. Not from a friend of the Avengers. Certainly not from anyone who'd been rash enough to agree to marry him, and then fool enough to actually do it.) "Come on. Explain it to me like I'm five. I'm used to that kind of thing."
"Very well." Loki sat down stiffly on the side of bed. Stiffly was good. Better than brittle, which would have let this stranger have a window in for no other reason than that Loki no longer had any way to hide. "The marriage—between I, an alien to this world, and you, a product of it—creates a binding. Under its influence, I will be unable to cause harm to your world or anyone on it. Neither will I be able to leave Earth as long as you remain here." A cruel trap, and clever. Thor could never have thought it up on his own; Heimdall must have had a hand in it, but it hardly mattered who had been involved as long as Loki couldn't see a way out. So far, he'd considered both murder (of his new husband) and theft (of his ship, with which he'd rescued what was left of Asgard, thank you very much); unfortunately, he was already inhibited from doing either. "Without consummation, the effect is temporary."
"How temporary?"
"Fifty years. Give or take."
"Doesn't it break when I die?" Barnes asked, proving he had picked up on at least some of the details during his briefing. "What difference does it make whether or not we have sex, if it's going to last about the same amount of time either way?"
"...You don't know."
"Know what?"
Loki had seen it immediately, of course, He hadn't lost his sight, just his magic, and this was as clear to him as Barnes' metal arm. "Whatever was done to you, with whatever magic—you'll live as long as I will. Unless you're killed before then, of course; but how likely do you think that is?"
"Huh."
"Indeed." Cheered by the thought that Barnes might now become even more miserable than Loki was himself—near-immortality seemed to trouble humans a great deal, judging by some of their entertainment he'd been exposed to in his weeks of purgatory, as the debate about what to do with him had raged on in the world outside these rooms—Loki looked at him closely, ready to soak in every inch of his reaction.
Barnes, however, didn't give much of one. He merely said, "Does Fury know that, do you think."
"I've no doubt of it," Loki said, which was as true as it was a wedge. He'd met the man in question, after all; he'd had a good look in. Knowing Fury had pushed for this candidate above all others, it didn't take much guesswork.
"Huh," Barnes said again. "Guess we'd better do this, then."
"If we must." Loki reached at random for one of the bottles on the dresser. If he had to submit to this, he had no intention of being sober until at least a full day after it was over.
"I mean, unless you'd rather get out of here."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You guys came to Earth on a spaceship, didn't you?"
"I—yes."
"It's still around here somewhere, isn't it?"
"...What are you getting at?"
Barnes grinned at him with such a savage brightness Loki was tempted to look behind him to see who else might be in the room with them. "Let's go."
*
It was late, and the way to the hangar was no longer as heavily guarded as it had been the last time Loki had tried this. The few armed guards they did see, though they stiffened when they saw Loki, waved them both through once they saw Barnes. Once they were inside the hangar itself, all was dark and quiet; the two of them seemed to be as alone as they had been before, and yet somehow this state of aloneness was more intimate than it had been, both their breathing uneven in the dark.
Perhaps that was what caused Loki to say, "Somehow it doesn't surprise me, that you'd flee your own planet before you'd come to bed with me."
"Running away's solved a lot more problems for me than it's made," Barnes said, sounding less stung and more amused than Loki had been hoping for.
Breaking into the ship wasn't a difficult task; soon, the ship Loki had wearied of after the long, tedious journey to Earth had lit up, appearing now to be exactly what it had seemed to be before that: Another chance, ripe for the taking. Inside, it smelled worse than it had the first time he'd stepped foot in it, yet Loki felt nearly as light as he had then.
"I hope you know how to fly this thing," he muttered, to see what Barnes would say.
Barnes just grinned at him, as he had before. "Nope, but I can give it a damned good try."
"...On second thought, I think I'll drive."
*
There was no other vessel on Midgard that could have pursued them beyond the atmosphere; still, on the way up, Loki had to engage in no few maneuvers in order to disrupt various human projectiles. To his annoyance, the binding held, so that he had to send the missiles into the sea, rather than back at the jets that had launched them to begin with.
"Amazing," Barnes said, once they were well out of it, nothing before them but the emptiness of space, nothing behind but the blues and grays of Midgard as it retreated. There was an actual expression on his face, now. Loki thought it might have been awe.
It was an expression that held as Barnes looked around the cockpit, and as he wandered around the entirety of the ship, spending more time in the engine room than anywhere else, asking question upon question. These Loki answered, growing ever more uncertain how much of his bemusement was a response to Barnes himself, and how much was a response to his own reactions. He wasn't usually half so patient (not unless he had a plan requiring he be, in which case his patience was unending).
When Barnes finally ran out of questions, he turned to Loki and once again became wryly opaque. "Still want to sleep with me?"
When Barnes had been presented to him, Loki hadn't been impressed. Even if he'd been something other than he was, he thought it would have been difficult to eke out much regard for the person meant to serve as his chain. Now, though...
"Perhaps," he said, remembering the way Barnes had grinned at him, and barely even caring that succumbing would guarantee he could never again enact either vengeance or conquest on Midgard. "If you're very good."
*
Loki lasted three days before winding up in Barnes' bed, and comforted himself by thinking that had to be at least three years in human time, and so clearly Barnes had been the one to suffer more.
Afterward, Barnes said, "If we're going to be stuck together forever, it's nice that we can do that."
"Yes," Loki said.
He considered telling Barnes the binding had only served to prevent him leaving Earth while Barnes was upon it. Once either or both of them were elsewhere, it would simply lie dormant until they had both returned.
He considered telling him, but in the end Loki decided it would be better to keep that information to himself for the time being.