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One minute, Tony is a purring puddle in Bucky and Winter's arms as they sit on the roof of the Tower amidst the dishes of their romantic dinner date under the night sky. The next, the ground drops out from under them.
Bucky (Tony's sexy, human super-soldier mate), Winter (the badass alien super-soldier symbiote hidden inside Bucky's body, who is also Tony's mate), Tony (in his flerken form, which appears to be a black and white house cat, but is, in fact, a deceptively cuddly eldritch horror), and their dinner all land in a dingy-looking cell. It takes great effort for Tony not to sink his claws into Bucky's shirt to catch himself. He does not want to scratch Bucky; he isn't sure whether Winter can heal necrotic wounds that would permanently scar a normal human. Bucky and Winter are good mates. Tony knows they will not drop him. They held him steadily as the Manhattan skyline fell into gray stone walls, iron bars, a slab jutting out from the wall for a bed, a bucket that stinks of humans not burying their waste like civilized creatures, and a woman with bright yellow hair, yellow eyes, and a red scrap of a dress, who smells like sulfur and smoke and predator.
Tony is a predator too, and his instincts tell him not to shift back into a human. He follows those instincts even though his human instincts urge him to change back and challenge this predator, defend their mates. But Winter is hiding, and Winter is the best predator Tony has ever met. So he ignores his foolish human instincts and pretends to be a house cat while he watches the lovely, false creature standing before them.
She smiles coyly up at Bucky.
Tony's ears flatten. His tail fur brushes over Bucky's protectively cradled arms with every lash back and forth to communicate his discontent.
"Who are you?" Bucky asks the inhuman creature who stands like the toxic fumes of a fire.
"I can be anyone you want," she replies, voice as smokey as her scent, a note of sultry melody hiding the unsettling soft, bass growl Tony is sure even Bucky's superhearing hasn't caught.
Tony knows that the "woman" is beautiful, the way humans sometimes are, but she is also wrong in the way of creatures with hidden teeth and claws and venom. Yes! That's it. She is pretty, like a… Like a Venus flytrap. They appear pretty and smell sweet, but evolved both attributes to entice the flies they will close in their flowery jaws and slowly eat.
This creature is a trap. And it's looking at Bucky like he is prey.
Tony tenses further.
"That's not what I asked," Bucky says, a hint of annoyance in his strong voice. "Who are you, where are we, and who brought me here?"
Clever mate, Tony thinks with a curl of smug satisfaction. He will not reveal Tony or Winter. Tony is a pet, a mere house cat. He is Not Pleased with this woman, but he is surely incapable of wrapping her in his mouth tentacles and slamming her face repeatedly into the floor to facilitate their escape. Tony is small. Once their enemy is a dead heap on the floor, he can slip through the bars and break or pick the lock as a human.
Assuming Winter doesn't simply rip the barred door out of the wall.
Such a kind, powerful mate, Winter is! He still leaves Tony delicious fresh meat some mornings—usually pigeons because they are Tony's favorite. The other mornings, Bucky cooks for him. "Genius brain like yours needs fuel," Bucky likes to say on the days Tony foolishly argues for running off with only a cup of the coffee that tastes so good in his human mouth, but so foul in his flerken one.
"I brought you here, but my name is not for you to know," the strange woman says. "As to where…." She trails a pale finger up Bucky's bare arm. Tony opens his mouth to bite it. Before he can, though, the scent of smoke intensifies, and Tony thinks her trespassing finger begins to glow, red-orange as an ember. He cannot be sure, however, because as soon as the glow starts, Bucky's stalwart arms go slack.
Tony's unshakable mates drop him.
It is shocking, but not enough to keep Tony from landing on his feet. He hisses and bristles, back arched, between the demon thing and his mates, fur standing on end, ears flat, lips pulled back and sharp teeth bared, claws extended and ready to rend. He glares up at the woman-thing from in front of his mates' ankles.
She pays Tony's rage at bewitching his mates no mind.
That is a mistake. Tony will make sure it is her last.
He opens his mouth.
Bucky snaps back into awareness to see Tony, still in his flerken form, with his thick mouth tentacles wrapped around their witchy captor's calves. Tony whips her back and forth between the floor, walls, and sometimes even the ceiling like she's a rag doll or a Looney Toon villain. Bucky only recognizes their captor because of the red, now-bloodstained dress. The rest of her is a mangle, but for the calves and feet Tony uses to fling her about.
Tony seems to realize that Bucky is okay now, because he pauses his assault.
The nameless woman's hand twitches.
Tony immediately resumes bashing her around the room from one hard surface to another.
"He is glorious," Winter says with smug adoration. "Our vicious, pretty mate is protecting us." Winter winds his head-stalk over Bucky's shoulder and down his body to wrap around one leg, bringing him eye-level with Tony. "Can I eat its head, pretty flerken?"
Bucky can't see that there's much head left to eat. He's glad they aren't currently sharing a mouth.
Tony's frantic battery of the demonic woman pauses, and he slow-blinks up at Winter.
Winter gives Tony a pleading look that's, frankly, pathetic.
Tony carefully drags the body to lay at their feet and props it up so Winter can bite off what's left of the head.
Bucky sighs, resigned, and runs his hand over his face before looking over his boyfriends' heads toward the cell door. He will never understand Winter and Tony's dynamic when Tony is a flerken. They do the grossest things for each other and somehow make it all look sweet. But after Winter told Tony that he thinks heads are humans' tastiest feature, Iron Man reduced the number of headshots he uses to take down supervillains, so maybe it's not just Tony's flerken that's catering to Winter's distressing tastes. Bucky is ninety percent certain if Tony hadn't been so worried about their safety, he'd've kept this creature's head (and neck) intact to help Winter live his best life biting it off.
When the sounds of happy chomping stop, Bucky dares to look down again. "Oh my God," he says and heaves an exasperated sigh. "You ate the whole thing? Really? We don't even know what species she is. What if she's toxic to symbiotes?"
"She is not. She was delicious. Hot. Smokey." Winter rumbles with pleasure that Bucky can feel inside his head. "Thank you, Tony," Winter purrs, nuzzling Tony's head with his own. "You are a good provider."
Tony preens.
There is a ring of blood around his mouth. That Bucky finds it cute is surely a sign of the company he keeps.
"Hey, murder kitten," Bucky says, "might wanna wipe your mouth." He gestures a ring around his own to illustrate.
Tony licks his chops with smug satisfaction and gives Bucky a slow blink before rubbing up against his leg.
"You're too fuckin' cute," Bucky grouses down at him, biting back a helpless smile. "Let's get going. We still need to figure out where we are."
To Bucky's surprise, Tony unfurls a mouth tentacle and taps expectantly on Bucky's metal shoulder.
Bucky suddenly wants to kick himself. "The beacon! Right." Tony built one into Bucky's newest arm so he could send JARVIS an SOS if he got nabbed or needed help. Bucky grabs the left sleeve of his dress shirt to rip it off, but another of Tony's tentacles stops him. "What?"
Tony stands up against Bucky's leg and withdraws his tentacles to let out a pathetic little mew.
Bucky recalls how Tony's eyes had darkened earlier that evening when Bucky showed up at the penthouse with the jewel-toned admiral blue dress shirt over his black slacks and polished dress shoes. He snorts. "Alright, alright, I'll save the shirt." He quickly unbuttons it and throws it over his right shoulder, leaving him in his undershirt, and keys in the touch sequence that'll activate the beacon. The blue veining around the last touch-point glows for a moment, signaling that it worked.
"Winter, think you can handle the door?" Bucky asks.
"As you wish," Winter says, smiling sweetly with his maw of sharp white teeth. Tony showed them The Princess Bride last week, and Winter had been charmed by the idea of saying one thing and meaning two.
"I love you too," Bucky tells Winter, though of course he already knows, what with being tapped into Bucky's thoughts 24/7.
Winter shoots a series of tentacles out of Bucky's stomach and leg and rips the barred door out of the stone wall. It comes out in a horrible screech of metal and a worrying clatter of crumbling stone.
When Tony darts into the dark hallway before Bucky can scoop him up or tell him to wait, Bucky hurriedly follows, Winter retreating into his skin as he slips out the gaping hole in the cell. "Tony?" Bucky calls. His dark vision is, for lack of a better term, super, but it's still hard for him to see much in the all-consuming darkness.
Bucky looks mournfully down at his favorite pair of black slacks and the new dress shoes Tony bought him last week. "Shit," he says eloquently. They're not skin tight, so they won't shift with him. Tony won't get to see Bucky in the blue shirt again after all. Still, maybe when the team comes, Bucky can come back for them. He hurriedly toes off his shoes and drops his slacks and shirt to the floor. He shifts in his socks and undershirt and boxer-briefs, and in a few seconds, drops to all fours as his body takes the form of a gigantic white dire-wolf. He'd been a regular white wolf before the serum took effect. Getting used to his bigger body, both as a human and a wolf, had been an exercise in dysphoria for the first few years.
Now that he's a wolf, he can see much more clearly in the darkness. Hear better. Smell everything. The blood in the empty cell indeed smells smokey, with undertones of fire and sulfur. There are no new scents but theirs and the creature's, but the stale scents of old urine, blood, and sweat linger in the air around them. Bucky takes a relieved whiff of Tony's flerken scent, an oddly comforting mix of cinnamon, mountain air, and faint hints of ozone, and trails after it.
He quickly catches up to his mate and nudges Tony's shoulder reprovingly with his nose. Pack must stick together. Tony merely twines around Bucky's front paws, nearly tripping them both, and stands on his hind legs to reach Bucky's shoulder. He makes a plaintive meow, and Bucky feels Winter extend to carefully lift Tony onto their shoulders.
Tony sprawls on top of Bucky and immediately starts purring.
Bucky's chest warms at the physical cue of Tony's contentment. His mind settles, too; with Tony is on his back, Bucky will not have to hunt for him to keep him safe. His mate is powerful, formidable, a deadly predator in a deceptively harmless shape, but Tony's small body breaks more easily than Bucky's, which is built to take down prey and can be easily healed by Winter. Bucky often worries for his mate. Tony's fearlessness makes him vulnerable to the violence of bigger, stronger predators.
I have him, Winter assures Bucky, soothing him, mind to mind. We can run.
Bucky doesn't run, but he does extend his legs in a graceful lope as he follows the trickled scent of fresh air down the long corridor and up a stairwell.
The stairwell emerges into a poorly lit hallway with moldering tapestries and empty metal torch sconces on the stone walls. Wires trail along the ceiling like stingy Christmas lights, the occasional flickering bulb dropping from the cord every so often like breadcrumbs. The faint hum of electricity feels loud in the echoing silence, otherwise broken only by their breaths, heartbeats, and Tony's purring.
Bucky looks left and right, prances a few paces first in one direction, then the other, scenting the air. Beneath the scents of dust, stale rooms, and metal is the faint scent of fresh air—but it's coming from both directions. He is unsure which path to take. And although he cannot hear anyone nearby, they may yet be beset by enemies, and they still know nothing of where they are.
Winter, we need Tony. Human Tony.
Winter dutifully forms a head and passes on the message.
Bucky feels his mate stand and stretch on his back, then hop to the floor.
Tony is human before he lands, still dressed in his date outfit. He smells less like the open sky as a human, and the hints of ozone are gone, but Bucky nonetheless revels in his mate's scent and leans into his hip, nuzzles his stomach in delighted greeting.
"Hey, Balto," Tony says, rubbing Bucky's giant head with apparent fondness before looking up at the wired lights, hand still resting on Bucky's head. "Alrighty. Let's find King Koopa, kick his ass, and go home. Winter, gimme a leg up, will you?"
Tony raises a foot, and Winter forms a little platform for him to step onto. Tony balances with Bucky's head and steps up and then up again to get his hands on the wires. What he does, Bucky can't see—Tony's body is blocking his view—but then half the hallway lights flicker out, then back on, and Tony lets out a triumphant "Ha!" and hops down. "The princess is that way," he says, motioning to their right. "C'mon, let's go. You don't happen to have any weapons lying around, do you?" Tony fiddles with his wristwatch until suddenly it's an Iron Man gauntlet.
Winter harrumphs in Bucky's head and envelops his body, turning them into an inky black dire-wolf so big their head is level with Tony's.
"We are a weapon," Winter says smugly with their lupine mouth.
Tony looks up from his gauntlet and momentarily reels when he sees they're eye to eye. He gives them a careful once over, then grins, eyeing their forest of tall, razor-sharp teeth—far more than even Bucky's dire-wolf form has.
"Good point," Tony says with a playful quirk of his lips. "Many good points, actually. You should point them out to whoever dragged us here. Really stick it to 'em."
Bucky chuffs and affectionately bumps Tony's head with his own, then yields the reins of their shared body to Winter.
Winter swiftly eliminates the threats to them and their mate: the team of bodyguards who dare to fire at them, and then at Tony when he ducks into the room. Winter shields him with their body while he scans the room for the evil mastermind. (There is always an evil mastermind. Tony's mind is always superior.) Bullets are no match for their skin, nor guns for their tremendous strength, and the mad scientist who dares to argue with Tony is no match for their mate's peerless intelligence or brutal right hook.
"Can we bite off their heads and put them in a pile?" Winter asks Tony.
"Sorry, sugarplum, we need these guys alive so we can question them."
"But the ones who are not alive?" Winter gives Tony a pleading look.
You just ate someone ten minutes ago, Bucky points out with fond frustration. Are you even hungry?
I am always hungry, Winter tells the mate whose body he shares. And you are always hungry. There is food. He looks pointedly at the three guards in yellow rubber suits whose hearts are silent. Let's eat!
Tony sighs and shakes his head a little, though it seems to be at himself. He's smiling ruefully. "Just legs this time, Cujo. Sorry. We need to ID these guys. Find out who else they're working with."
Winter lashes out a tentacle and snares first one, then another, and greedily bites off their legs, crunching happily on bone and meat while he stacks the remainders into a pile.
Winter is neat with his food; Bucky says table manners are important.
Also, stacking bodies is fun.
The scientist on the ground twitches, which is not good, so Winter thwaps him absently with a tentacle so that he lies still. When he's done eating his snack, which was tasty even though it didn't include any heads or chewy brains, he lopes back to Tony and peers over his shoulder, then chuffs with disgust and lets his mate handle the control panel of the machines their fallen enemy had been using when they arrived.
Winter sits on the unconscious scientist in case he decides to wake up and cause trouble, and watches his pretty mate's back.
The Avengers arrive when Winter is thoughtfully eyeing the scientist's legs; he cannot run if Winter has eaten them, and he will still be able to answer Tony's questions.
"I see date night's going well," Steve snarks, grinning under his Captain America mask as he hugs Winter and Bucky.
"Oh, yeah," Tony agrees, affectionately bumping Steve with his shoulder when Steve reaches the console. "Our dinner got crashed and scattered on the floor of a medieval dungeon by a sex demon who mind-whammied my boyfriends, and she was sent by the asshole they're sitting on so he could use Bucky as a blood donor for his magic serum science project." He huffed. "Broke a two-hundred-year-old bottle of wine before we were halfway through it. These people are monsters."
"Tony saved us," Winter says proudly. Their mate is formidable. Winter will, however, admit to Bucky that he is ashamed to have succumbed to the wiles of another, even if those wiles were a magical mental cage formed by their fantasy of being back on the rooftop with Tony and finishing their date.
"I looked like a cat," Tony clarifies at Steve's consternation.
Until the tentacles came out, Bucky adds with a laugh only Winter can hear.
Winter recedes when he hears the other Avengers approaching. They have never seen him suiting Bucky, only as tendrils and a head-stalk. For now, Winter wants to keep it that way. By the time they arrive, Bucky looks like a giant white wolf again, and shortly afterward, a man in skintight clothing who backtracks with Clint to retrieve his date outfit.
It takes hours and a return to the Tower for Winter and Bucky to finally get Tony all to themselves again.
Winter wastes no time. "I want to have sex now," he informs his mates from a head-stalk hovering over Bucky's shoulder.
"You want to have orgasms," Bucky corrects, but pulls Tony into his arms in the penthouse kitchen, where they've just finished washing what they could salvage from the broken dinner dishes.
Winter does not think the judgment in Bucky's voice is fair; Bucky also wants to have orgasms and touch their mate all over with his hands and mouth and engorged phallus. Though Winter doesn't share Bucky's thoughts with Tony, he does shove them back at Bucky, along with one of Bucky's fantasies of bending Tony over the table behind them.
"That was direct," Tony says like he's amused but not surprised. He pulls Bucky closer and tugs his face down into a kiss.
Pleasure chemicals join the adoration chemicals bursting through Bucky's brain at the intimate contact. Winter basks in them. He wants more.
"Winter wants me to bend you over the table," Bucky says, backing up to it and tugging Tony with him. "We don't have to, but I'm in if you are."
"You're gonna be in all right," Tony teases, reaching for Bucky's belt.
Winter hums happily as Bucky's pleasure increases. While Bucky holds Tony and touches his chest and arms and face, Winter helpfully sneaks out tendrils that strip Tony to the knees and snake into his ass to get him ready.
Tony is making the prettiest sounds. Each one sends a shock of endorphins through Bucky's system.
Soon the downpour will turn into a deluge.
Winter is thrilled date night isn't ruined. In fact, their evening's looking up.