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Oh, I Could Just EAT YOU UP! An Avenger's Holidays In Hel Story

Chapter 1: When Did Unicorn Poop Become a Thing?

Summary:

In which Loki and Mina realize that no holiday is safe from the epic round of truly bad luck that the Avengers have when celebrating the most innocent of times...

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

 

 

“You’re expecting me to do what?”

Loki was lounging - elegantly, of course - against a pillar in the huge common room where the Avengers tended to gather when not on missions or getting patched up in the Medbay. He was sartorial perfection in a bespoke Tom Ford suit in onyx. Mina paused from shoveling the candy into one of the massive bowls to smile at him, a little misty with appreciation over his sheer beauty. Her- not her boyfriend, the God of Mischief and Lies could never be called something so ridiculous, her beau? Her partner? Her… Apparently, Loki had been speaking to her because he’d paused, looking at her peevishly.

“Sorry, Loki. I was admiring how unreasonably beautiful you are in that suit, but yeah... just pass out some candy to the trick or treaters? For the media coverage? To make you look... uh... caring?”

Mina said the right thing, of course. The fine lines around his glittering emerald eyes faded away. “Of course you were, darling. This is understandable. I shall repeat myself. You cannot possibly…” He picked up a violently colored package luridly branded as “Unicorn Poop!” pinched between his thumb and forefinger, the way one might hold a dirty diaper. “...Expect me to touch these vile things, much less give them to children?” Loki’s sneer was quite credible, but Mina knew he was posturing. He liked children, though he would rather cut his hair than admit it. He had been shockingly kind to Amelia, Mina’s niece, last New Year’s when her skeevy brother and his wife dumped their daughter in her’s and Loki’s laps and hoofed it to the airport for a Caribbean vacation. 

“The candy is hideous,” she admitted, “but this is the crap kids love now, everything is ‘unicorn,’ or ‘poop.’ Or the blissful combination of both.” Loki tossed the lurid sweet back into the pile in the bowl. “Tony got a tractor-trailer full of the stuff from this candymaker he’s doing business with. The man is some sort of real-life Willy Wonka.” 

“Hmm,” Loki could even make a humming noise sound deeply disapproving. “Is that the bizarre little gentleman I’ve seen Tony squiring around the tower?"

As if he knew he’d been called, Stark strolled into the room, skirting the cases upon cases of candy piled high around the room. “I gotta admit, Horo, this is enough candy to trick or treat the entire state’s population of kids into a sugar coma.”

The man with him laughed, more of a high-pitched giggle that was startling coming from someone as hugely wide and tall as he was. In fact, his height and weight ended up forming a perfect shape of a square. He was dressed in a top hat and a bright candy-colored suit, with tufts of purplish hair sticking out at angles from his top hat.

“Remember when you watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with me?” Mina murmured to Loki.

“Indeed,” he said, folding his arms, “this creature has managed to take all the most unpleasant elements of Sir Wonka and made them even more troubling.”

“Reindeer Games!” shouted Tony, “Come and meet another magician!”

Mina watched as Loki’s entire form stiffened. “Did he just refer to me as a… a magician?” Loki spat. 

“Uh, I think Tony’s already a vodka bottle in for the festivities,” she soothed. “Just ignore him.”

Nonetheless, she pasted on a smile as Tony led the bizarre creature over. Bypassing his host, the man whipped off his top hat, sweeping it low into a courtly bow. “Horatio J. LaDreamy at your service!”

They spent some time sorting through the cases of candy, Horatio holding up each one and exclaiming over its merits like parents with a baby picture. Mina attempted to go through the plan of having Horatio himself pass out the first round of candy for the media coverage. “It’s a really nice thing, if you don’t mind, Mr. ah… Mr. LaDreamy. And the kids will be so excited to meet you.”

“You’re just so scrumptious,” Horatio said, his voice hoarser now, perspiration dotting his upper lip. Leaning in, he held onto Mina’s hand, “I could just eat. You. Up.”

Her revulsion at this freak in his pink-striped shirt and his unfocused, glittering eyes was too great to hide, but his grin only widened as she yanked her hand away. “I have to…” Horatio was still staring at her greedily, and Mina backed away, “...go over… here.” 

She speed-walked over to where Loki stood with a look of profound boredom and a very nice glass of Latife Rothschild 1999. Taking the glass from him, she downed it in one gulp. The tall, beautiful god looked down at her with the same shock and disgust normal people would reserve for murder, or terrible train wrecks. 

“You just violated that Lafite,” Loki said with deep disgust, “you just spat on it and threw it into the gutter of your untrained palate.”

“Don’t care,” Mina managed, taking the last gulp, “I needed it. That man is a freak. A total weirdo.” He merely gave her his long-suffering, “Yes, I know this already” expression. “He just told me,” she said, still looking over Loki’s expensively suited shoulder at Horatio, who was now plying an unamused Natasha with an awkward-looking magic trick involving a deck of cards and a very long scarf he kept pulling from his sleeve, giggling with excitement. “He grabbed my hand and said the weirdest thing, he said, “I could just eat you up.” Loki’s eyes narrowed, and she hastened to clarify, “He wasn’t hitting on me, it was creepier. Like he really was hungry.”

Loki thoughtfully eyed the man, who’d somehow gotten tangled up in the scarf he’d been using for his ‘magic trick.’ “Some of the vilest monsters I have battled were quite benign in appearance. I shall examine this creature more closely.”

 

But really, it was no one’s fault.

“Three cheers for… uh...  the… Candy Guy!” Tony was deep in his cups and Mina was just happy he was still standing, thanks to an occasional nudge from Pepper behind him.

Horatio didn’t seem to mind, smiling benignly down on the happy Stark Tower employees, most of them waist-deep in Unicorn Poop.

“Thank you, Tony, my dear friend!” He spread out his giant arms to the crowd, “And to all of you, thank you for helping me bring joy to the children! They don’t want boring old chocolate bars anymore! They want bright, sparkly candy that will make their mouths tingle and their tummies tap dance with happiness! To be honest, friends, I could not do it without you.”

The crowd chuckled, smiling up at Horatio while slipping fistfuls of candy into backpacks, purses, and bulging pockets.

“No!” Horatio said earnestly. “I really couldn’t! The sweetest and kindest among you will guarantee that the next year’s production of the Unicorn Poop candy line will be bigger and better than ever! More than double this year’s output and keeping up to with demand. I just need one thing from you to make every child in the world hold a package of unicorn poop in their chubby little hands.” He looked directly at Mina and smiled, suddenly showing many, sharp teeth. “I just need you.”

There was a violent pink explosion, cotton candy shooting in all directions and sending a spray of crystalized sugar into the eyes and lungs of everyone in the huge room, coughing and wheezing until everyone could catch their breath.

“Where,” snarled Loki in his most severe, stentorian tone, “is MINA?”

“Wh- I do not see Jane!” protested Thor.

Natasha circled the room rapidly. “Bruce is missing!”

Tony suddenly seemed to sober up. “Hey, has anyone seen Pepper?”



“Wh- where the hell are we?” Jane gasped, hanging on to a sagging Shanice from Accounting, whose heaving chest showed she hadn’t weathered the abduction well.

Mina, leaning against a candy-striped pillar for balance, pulled away as she realized the pillar was clinging to her hand like the creepiest possible taffy, as if it was alive, wrapping tendrils of its taffy-esque substance up her arm. “Yuck!” she whined, trying to peel the substance off her new black blouse. “If I had to guess, based on the shittest series of holidays ever over this last year, that that psycho candymaker from hell has somehow kidnapped us and we’re in his dungeon… factory… purgatory… of candy.”

“Right you are, sweet Mina!” Horatio happily approached the group, not seeming to notice how everyone cringed away from him. “You are all here as my very special guests! As the sweetest, nicest people I’ve met this year, you’ve won the Golden Pass to tour my candy kingdom!”

“A Golden Pass?” Mina tried not to laugh. The situation was too serious, but she couldn’t help herself. Horatio was wearing a top hat that looked suspiciously like the one Willy Wonka wore in the movie. “You mean a Golden Ticket?”

“No,” he answered cheerfully, sampling a flower that appeared to be made of lime green nougat, “a Golden Pass is even better! It’s a super-duper big honor!”

Looking around, Mina tried to find an exit. Please god, she thought, don’t let the Oompa-Loompa ripoffs come out singing and dancing!

Because it was an Avenger’s Holiday From Hel, it was worse.

“Are those…unicorns?” gasped Sun Lee, the sweetest girl in HR, who was always making cookies and bringing them to work.

Everyone turned together and sure enough, a herd of alarmingly cheerful candy-colored unicorns came trotting over to them, making some sort of unicorn-type greeting. Not neighing, exactly. More like a mean-spirited giggle, Mina thought dourly.

“Here are my babies!” Horatio held his arms out, greeting one unicorn after another with a kiss on the lips. 

Mina heard a faint “Ewwww…” behind her, it might have come from Maurice in Promotions and Marketing, who was edging away from a unicorn insisting on nuzzling into his neck with the same enthusiasm of a date on Prom Night. 

“Uh, they’re really… I didn’t know unicorns actually existed, though based on this past year you’d think I’d be more open-minded,” Mina said, edging away from the cotton-candy pink horn of the equine interloper trying to snuggle up under her arm.

Horatio beamed at her, oozing charm and a weird kind of faux innocence as he nudged another unicorn - this one a swirl of lavender and baby blue - at Mina, bookending her with mystical creatures. “Come, darlings, I’ll take you on a tour of Horatio La’Dreamy’s candy factory!”

Mina could see Darcie gearing up to give him the Stern Talking To, and caught her eye, shaking her head. She’d been gripping her emerald pendant like it was Loki’s perfect cock since they’d popped in to this candy-caned striped hellscape. He’d find them and save the day, like always. She just needed to get them all to play along until he showed up. 

And when he did? She was going to suck his dick like she was mad at it.

“Here we are,” Loki raged, “in the - as Tony has repeatedly and tiresomely claimed - the most secure building on the planet, and yet once again, my Mina has been abducted. Again!” He was running his hands through his perfect ebony hair, and it unreasonably made it even more full and flowing over his expensively suited shoulders.

“Thanks, Severus Snape, but remember that my fiancee and another twenty Stark employees also got snatched?” Tony was furious and embarrassed, which served to make him even more annoying. He was attempting to drum some discordant rhythm on the granite bar top with spoons, and it was so unbearable that the even-tempered Steve was the one to reach over and snatch the silverware from his jangly hands.

“Everyone calm down!” Steve was at his most stern and Captain-ish and Loki watched cynically as the rest of the - as Mina called them - the Spandex Squad immediately obeyed. His handsome, stern gaze turned to Tony. “Where did you meet Horatio? How is it that no one knows the location of his factory? Everyone needs employees. Can we track him through the IRS? How did he get the kind of tech that could move that many people at once? Loki, is this magic?”

Loki was pacing around the last location of the lunatic candymaker as he disappeared from Stark Tower with his Mina. “I do not recognize the energy signature, but it feels more as seidr than technology. But all seidr… it leaves a trace. I cannot find one here.” 

Thor was absently swinging Mjollnir, nearly braining one of the waitstaff trying to clear up the candy carnage. He was desperate to smite someone- anyone at this point. Loki glared at his brother after another close pass from the hammer. “Brother, do contact Heimdal and ask for his assistance.” 

“I shall do this immediately!” Thor roared happily, striding masterfully to the elevators.

“A good idea,” approved Natasha.

Loki sneered elegantly. “I contacted Heimdal the moment they all disappeared. He knows nothing. But it will keep my idiot brother occupied while we work.”

Rubbing her forehead, she allowed herself to look vulnerable, just for a moment. “Then how are we going to find them in time?” Looking at him with troubled blue eyes, she said, “I feel like time is ticking down to something. Do you feel it?”

Looking out the window as the sun headed to the horizon, the afternoon light sending them all into sharp focus, Loki fought down an unfamiliar sense of panic. “If one looks to most of the pagan legends, sunsets are often associated with human sacrifice.”

“You don’t-” the blood drained from Natasha’s pale complexion, leaving her sheet-white. She thought of Bruce, his gentle smile and his kind way with those smaller and weaker than himself. “We have to get them out of there.”

“I assure you, my ocharovatel'nyy ubiytsa,” he said grimly, “I am quite in agreement.”

Every holiday, Mina thought as the unicorn prodded her in the back with his horn, every goddamned holiday. Would it really be too much to ask to get Halloween off from the Avenger’s holiday fuckups? My favorite holiday? Her self-pitying thoughts were interrupted as Horatio waved grandly and the massive pink and lavender doors before them began to slowly open.

“You may ask,” he puffed, “how my candy is so sweet? So perfectly formed and flavored? How it can be so addicting?” He beamed at the sullen group behind him. “Meet my secret weapon!”

Mina gulped and she heard a shrill scream from Carla from Banqueting and Events as she passed out. It was another unicorn. A gigantic-ass, monstrous unicorn whose horned head nearly brushed the top of a room the size of an airport hangar. She was violent splashes of aqua, purple, and fuschia. But her eyes were the blazing red of hell and when she opened her big, horsey mouth, she roared, a thunderous strike that hit the group like a fist, making everyone cringe and cover their ears. There was steam rising from the floor, which was liberally splashed with red and dotted with… bits of something horrible. And popping rapidly out from under her striped tail, were- Mina squinted. “Oh, my god,” she groaned, “is that unicorn poop?”

“An A for the pretty lady in the front row!” Horatio said happily, “Yes, this is my sweet angel and the producer of the entire Unicorn Poop line! Glow in the Dark Unicorn Poop, Candy Corn Unicorn Poop, Peppermint Striped Unicorn Poop, and Fudgy Center Unicorn Poop, though that last one isn’t selling the way I thought it would.” His mildly puzzled expression cleared as another giant pile of candy flew from Big Mama Unicorn to be separated and packaged by some listless robots in the bright candy wrappers. “Anyway!” he continued, “So my beloved is such a good girl, producing pile after pile of delicious treats, day after day, 24/7. But a girl’s gotta eat, right?”

“What…” Jane’s expression told Mina she’d already put two and two together, “what do you feed her?”

Horatio’s eyes glowed, “Why, only the sweetest and kindest folks ever! After spending the week at Stark Tower and getting to know everyone, I knew I was picking the sweetest, nicest people there! And it’s perfect timing,” his giggle was alarmingly high-pitched, “because my girl is hungry.”

Big Mama Unicorn let out a terrifying bellow, and all the smaller unicorn guards nickered in agreement as the humans huddled closer together.

Notes:

As usual, all the smut comes in Chapter 2, see you tomorrow!