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There were times when Tony was younger (much younger, a traitorous voice whispered) that waking up hanging from an unfamiliar ceiling wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow. Unfortunately, the nature of his “waking up in a strange place” experiences had changed since joining the Avengers, so he was fairly confident that this group was not looking for a good time.
(Unless these guys were really into HYDRA roleplay, in which case those outfits looked appropriately realistic, but Tony was still going to have to take a pass, thanks.)
Tony’s head was pounding, and his body felt like one giant bruise, but if he concentrated he could make out the figures of seven or eight men lumped together at the far end of the room.
He took the opportunity while his hosts were gazing attentively into a computer terminal to look around. It looked like any number of standard HYDRA bunkers, except for what looked like a wall of tanks filled with some sort of gelatinous liquid and creatures that looked like a cross between those giant pet rabbits and Care Bears. Tony would have assumed that the floppy eared, multi-colored monsters were dead, except that after a few moments, the entire wall of them—around twenty or so—opened their eyes simultaneously to stare at him.
Which, rude. Also, a tiny bit creepy. He locked eyes with one of them—just for a moment—and for that split second it felt like the creature was looking into him instead of at him. But that was probably just the concussion talking.
Tony opened his mouth to say something (ask the little monsters to stop staring, maybe), when there was a hiss and a needle pricked the back of his neck. He blinked, slowly, only now aware that one of the scientists had left the group and was standing next to him.
It occurred to him that being this distracted was not good, but it wasn’t like Tony could do much about it at the moment.
Tony blinked again, even more slowly than before, and tried to focus on the man next to him. It was a lot harder than it should have been.
(At this point, the genius was pretty sure the blob next to him was still a person, but his vision was too blurry for him to be certain.)
“I apologize, Mr. Stark,” the blob said, “but we’re not quite ready for you yet. Why don’t you rest a bit, and when you wake up, we’ll be waiting for you?”
Mr. Blob might have said more, but Tony wasn’t awake to hear it.
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The next time Tony opened his eyes, the room had been emptied of all but two HYDRA goons and the wall of monsters, whose eyes were once again closed.
Granted, the monsters and their eyelids weren’t really his most pressing concern at the moment, but it was still creepy.
“Ah, Mr. Stark,” the man who had spoken to him the first time smiled warmly when he saw that Tony was awake, and if that wasn’t the icing on an already bizarre cake, Tony wasn’t sure what would be. The guy looked like somebody’s kindly old grandfather, not an evil HYDRA overlord, and if Tony hadn’t been quite obviously hanging from the ceiling like a sad piñata, the genius might have thought the other man didn’t realize that he was working with the bad guys in this scenario. Unfortunately, unless grandpa had lost his glasses and couldn’t see more than a foot in front of him (and was also too deaf to hear the refrains of “hail, HYDRA” echoing periodically down the hall), then the man knew exactly what he was doing.
“As a fellow scientist, I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that the research we’ll be doing today will have a profound effect on the future of our planet,” Evil Grandpa explained as he examined a table of tools that Tony couldn’t quite see from where he was hanging. “As a scientist, you also know that sometimes, we are forced to use ourselves as the martyrs of our methods. Where would we be without the Curies or Salk?” Eventually, Grandpa picked up something that looked a bit too much like a cattle prod for Tony’s comfort, and the genius tensed at both the weapon and the other man’s placid smile.
Generic HYDRA goons were one thing, but happy crazies with “professional curiosity” and too many pointy objects were another thing entirely.
“Sorry Doc, but I haven’t really been into self-experimentation since my twenties. I think I might have to pass on this particular research opportunity,” he said, struggling to lean away.
The other man wasn’t paying attention, though, instead muttering to himself in a way that reminded Tony uncomfortably of himself when he was trying to work out a problem (if the recordings that Natasha liked to make of his sleep-deprived ramblings were any indication). “...if we can get one of them to resonate with you, we can try to replicate the conditions on a wider scale, and then…” Evil Grandpa didn’t stop talking even when he suddenly (and quite enthusiastically) thrust the cattle prod straight into Tony’s stomach.
Tony felt his vision bleed into streaming colors as the man struck him again and again, and the ball of pain that had been throbbing through his skull since he’d woken up the second time expanded exponentially until his entire body vibrated with it. A particularly vicious jab from Grandpa tore a breathless scream from his throat, and Tony barely saw the way the bunny-bears’ eyes opened across from him as his own slipped shut once more.
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Tony could tell that something was off as soon as he swam back into consciousness, and he wasn’t just talking about his brain’s current rendition of ‘angsty teenager with drum set’ going on in the back of his head. It took him a long minute to focus on any one thing (so much pounding), but he eventually registered that there was a humming noise coming from somewhere close by, and the room was full of bright lights—
He must had faded out again for a few moments, because the next time Tony blinked, he was just clear-headed enough to realize that the colorful lights he’d noticed before were the giant bunny-bears, somehow out of their cages and doing their best to terrorize the mass of HYDRA goons that had made their way into the room.
Even through his admittedly blurry vision, Tony could tell that the bunny-bears were winning. There was a mass of gray-clad bodies on the floor, and the creatures zigged and zagged from person to person until every goon was either on the ground or was frozen with a creature on their shoulder.
And then it got even weirder.
It wasn’t until the fighting was done and everything was still that it occurred to Tony that his furry monster friends seemed to be bigger and much more tentacle-y than they had from across the room. Suddenly exhausted, Tony took a long blink and tried to focus.
The monsters were all, once again, staring at him, and the humming was getting louder. It should have triggered something in Tony—fear, curiosity, anything —considering that he had no idea how they had gotten out of their cages or attached themselves to the HYDRA agents (where did the tentacles even come from, seriously), but it didn’t.
Honestly, Tony just wanted to pass out and wake up somewhere safe.
He was just about to ask (beg) one of the cute-yet-terrifying-turned-glowy-tentacle-creature things to put him out of his misery when there was a crash somewhere to his right and his head swiveled in that direction because, what now?
He couldn’t have looked away for more than a moment, but when Tony turned back, one of the creatures was hovering inches from his face, causing the genius to jerk back painfully and yelp in response.
There wasn’t much space in his corner of the room, so almost all of Tony’s field of vision was being blocked by the creature in front of him, and it made him nervous, though the creature itself didn’t seem bothered. If anything, it seemed curious, and slightly...concerned? Its eyes met Tony’s easily, and it took the genius a long minute to realize two things: one, the entire bunker had gone completely silent; and two, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d blinked.
That was probably bad. The good news, though, was that Tony couldn’t exactly feel his injuries anymore, either.
Tony knew that he should be alarmed, or outraged, or at least a little bit concerned with the fact that he was just calmly hanging from a ceiling, staring into the bunny-bear’s eyes, but he wasn’t. Now that he thought about it, it actually felt kind of nice, like he did during movie nights when Thor let the genius lean against him like an oversized body pillow. More than once, Tony had fallen asleep halfway through the movie because the Asgardian decided to run his surprisingly gentle fingers through Tony’s hair; the genius would always wake up sated and warm afterwards, even though Thor swore he hadn’t done anything special.
Tony felt like that now, staring into the creature’s eyes and watching its tentacles slowly reach for him.
His eyes slipped shut.
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Two things were immediately apparent when Tony opened his eyes again: one, that he was home, as evidenced by both the familiar bed he was in and the blonde sleeping in the corner; and two, those bunny-bear things were pretty cute now that his brain wasn’t operating at the speed of fried mush.
Also, they were very soft, which Tony knew because two of them were snuggled on either side of him like pet cats. They were no longer glowing, and their tentacles were gone, too, evidently having returned to wherever their tentacles went when they weren’t attacking HYDRA goons. That probably should have weirded him out, but whatever mojo had calmed him down before was evidently still working; that, and he just couldn’t be worried with a sleeping Thor almost comically crammed onto the sofa on the other side of the room.
(He’d worry about it later, maybe.)
“Do I want to know how I made it home?” he asked his companions, who turned their large eyes on Tony before readjusting slightly to drape themselves over him—one on his stomach, and the other across his legs. “Can you even understand anything I’m saying?”
The bunny-bears didn’t answer, but started up that same low humming that Tony recognized from the bunker. It was weird, actually, because it almost seemed like maybe they were talking to him, except—
“They are intelligent little creatures, for all that they do not speak,” the Asgardian spoke up sleepily, and Tony watched in fascination as the other man practically unfolded off of the sofa, stretched, and worked his way across the room. Whatever the look on Tony’s face was, it was enough to make Thor smirk, and settle on the bed perhaps a little bit closer usual. “Their language is not one that the All Speak understands, but it is easy to see that they are quite fond of you.” His smirk turned to a grin at the genius’ disbelieving look. “The others have teased me for it, but I hesitate to leave you alone with these creatures, for fear that they will steal you away when my back is turned. There were at least a dozen in the group that brought you back to us, and they were most reluctant to leave your side.”
“Yeah?”
“Aye. I have done my best to show them that I have no intention of leaving you,” Thor said, and without asking for Tony’s permission, began firmly but carefully insinuating himself between genius and creature until it was the thunder god pressed against the engineer, “but it would be much easier to watch you if I was next to you, don't you agree?”
(Yes, Tony did.)