Last chapter lovelies!

Tony's first indication that something was wrong was the stack of tabloids piled outside the front door of his house in Malibu. Trashy tabloids with headlines like "Trouble in paradise?" "Cheating scandal!" and his personal favorite "Is this the end of Tonki?" Pictures of him looking annoyed and Loki shielding his face from the paparazzi branded the covers. Tony sighed, thinking that this could only mean trouble. Then his phone started playing Fury's ringtone (Which was call me maybe because Loki had thought it was funny and had stolen his phone to mess up all of his ringtones last week) and he knew that this meant trouble.

"Have either of you seen the tabloids?" Was Fury's lovely way of saying hello and Tony rolled his eyes at the man's truly wondrous way with people.

"Well there's a stack of them almost as tall as me in front of my door, so yeah I'd say Loki saw them." He mutters, stepping around the stack to get in through the door and stops, mouth agape. The magazines are everywhere in the house. "Yeah ok, Loki's pissed." The avenger says softly into the phone, mentally cursing every tabloid and person who supported them because damn it now he was going to have to talk down an angry mischief god.

"Well calm him down then Stark, we can't have another bridge incident. That was hard enough to keep under wraps, we can't have him going off the rails again." He paused, seemingly searching for words "So keep him in your sights will you? I have people working with the magazine owners right now to stop this."

"By working with you mean threatening?" He asked, laughing lightly as he sidestepped another pile of magazines and headed towards his bedroom. "Anyways, seems like Loki has taken every copy of every tabloid ever to attack me with so we don't need to worry about this getting out."

Fury was silent for a few moments as Tony walked up the stairs to his bedroom, hoping that Loki would be here. All he needed right now was a disappearing act. Especially with how odd Loki had been acting lately, not that he would ever admit it to anyone, but it was kind of worrying him. It was almost like how Loki used to be, those first few nights when they would roll around in the dark for a few hours and then once dawn broke the god would be gone. But things had changed right? Tony had changed Loki just like Loki had changed him. Things were good between them, hell Loki had told off Victor Von Doom and thrown him off a bridge for Tony. Loki was practically a member of the avengers at this point. Everyone was working together harmoniously (With the exception of Thor and Loki, they still couldn't be in the same room for an hour without tears and yelling). But their relationship was good, and it was getting better every day right? They loved each other, things had to work out. Tony wasn't sure if he would be able to handle it if they didn't work out. Because what would life be if Loki walked away from him? That was a terrifying thought. Of course he had always known that he needed Loki more than the god needed him but even just considering the idea that Loki could turn around, could change his mind, and could crush his heart in a second…

"Are the two of you going to break up?" Fury finally asked, sounding like he was having some difficulty popping the question, but Tony appreciated the effort he was making at least.

"No, well at least I don't want to….I'll let you know if he suddenly tries to kill me and take over the world again though." He said quickly, hitting end on the call and sticking in his back pocket carelessly as he reached the bedroom door, it was slightly open and as he pushed on it the door swung open silently. Tony stepped inside, his breath catching when he saw Loki, for whatever reason he hadn't expected the god to stick around. "Lo?" He called softly, carefully, well aware that any wrong word may set the trickster off.

Loki was sitting on his bed, knees drawn up to his chest and a magazine in front of him, one thin finger tapping out a beat on the page he was reading. "You humans do have some interesting literature." He said quietly, glancing up at Tony through the long hair that was falling around his face.

"Loki….Whatever it says…" He saw that Loki had picked up the one with the words "cheating scandal" emblazoned on the cover and his stomach plummeted. "Come on you know it isn't true. I wouldn't do that."

The trickster raised an eyebrow at him, looking genuinely surprised "Oh this isn't saying that you've done anything wrong Tony fact you have been portrayed as the victim of my infidelity." His smile looked less like an expression of happiness and more like the twisted grimace of someone in terrible pain.

"What?" Tony crossed the room quickly and snatched the magazine away from Loki, eyes quickly scanning the pages; he rolled his eyes in disgust and threw it behind him, sitting down next to the slighter man on the bed. "Babe you shouldn't pay attention to those stupid things. We both know it isn't true and that's what matters right?"

Loki glanced down, tugging at a stray lock of inky hair, eyes cast away from Tony's worried expression and the human can feel a cold hand close around him. "Loki. It isn't true." He said again, forcing some bravado that he doesn't feel into his words. The god still refused to look at him and Tony grabbed his arm, hand closing easily around the skinny limb, Loki could easily shake him off but he doesn't, he stays completely, frighteningly still. "Loki." Tony tried again, shaking him now, getting really fucking worried.

Finally the trickster glanced up at him, green eyes impossibly wide and shaken. In the back of his mind Tony wondered if this was what Loki looked like when he was hanging off the side of that rainbow bridge and when he thought he had nothing to live for. "Let me get this out Anthony." He said coldly, making Tony jump when he says his given name, only one person had ever called him that. "I stopped it with Victor…..right after we had that first conversation about him." Tony considered pointing out that Loki had lied to him about the time frame of his relationship with Doom but he puts it out of his mind as the god continues speaking. "But…..when he….the day I threw him off the bridge" Loki paused to smile a little ruefully at that "he was trying to get back together…..he was trying to have sex and saying all of these things, all these things that almost made me let him."

"What type of things?" Tony asked quietly, not trusting his voice to go higher than a whisper because this couldn't be happening. No, no, no….things like this shouldn't happen, none of this was right.

"Things about me….how insane I am…..how sick I am…hell Tony, I tried to rule your planet a little over a year ago! All I could think was that maybe he's what I deserve because there is no way that I deserve to be with someone like you." Loki said in one long breath, looking back down at his hands again, running thin fingers over his scarred arms.

"Don't you ever say that you don't deserve me. If I know one thing it's that we deserve each other Loki, we're as equal as a god and a superhero can get." Tony replied sharply with just a hint of his usual sarcasm in his voice, grabbing the god's hands and pulling them away from his wrists, relocating them to his lap. "Keep talking hun' I know you need to." Loki glanced up at his words and smiled a little, looking partially amused by how well Tony knows him and partially terrified by it.

"But then he was rude about you so I pushed him off the bridge. Tony…he said something, something that scared me so terribly." He took a few deep breaths, pulling his hands away from the human and carding them through his dark hair, pushing it off of his face and tucking it behind his ears. "He said that you've tamed me."

The avenger stared at him silently for a few tense seconds, watching the god twitch and fidget under his intense stare. "Well you've tamed me. Isn't that what love is?"

A laugh, high and bitter exploded from him, the noise of it grating to Tony's ears. Loki glanced up at him through dark eyelashes and long hair, eyes glinting through the curtain of black. "Darling, don't kid yourself, neither of us knows what love is."

Remember how Tony had thought his stomach had plummeted? Well now it really had. He swallowed hard against the sudden lump in his throat and grabbed Loki's hands again, holding them tightly, eyes intent on the god. "Ok, I listened to you, now I want you to fucking listen to me for once. You're right, once upon a time I had no clue what love was, and neither did you….but I think we have an idea now." He raised Loki's thin hand to his lips and kissed his knuckles gently, expression soft. "You are not sick, you're not insane and I forgive you for what you did last year. We've already talked about this Loki; I thought that we were past it."

The trickster gazed at him and shook his head "I can't get past it Tony. Really I've tried, but I can't get past any of it, I can't….with everything that's happened…..everything is just so hard." He worried at his upper lip, hands clenching and unclenching. "I don't deserve you. I'm so ruined." Loki murmured his expression desperate and both frighteningly young and terribly old all at once. His pale skin was starting to change and Tony could feel a chill emitting from him that made his teeth start to chatter.

"Loki honey, calm down, you're losing your…you're turning blue." He said hurriedly, trying to rub some feeling back into the god's hands but knowing that it wouldn't work. "Shush baby you're just going to give yourself a panic attack if you don't get a grip." Tony said, voice rising as the air around the trickster started to smell faintly of burnt wires and metal, like magic.

"I can't" Loki said quietly, voice high and more than a little insane. His bright eyes were wide as they darted around the room, giving him the appearance of a caged animal; his hands, gripping at Tony are almost uncomfortably tight.

The human raised his hand to his lips and kissed it as gently as he could "Yes you can, just breathe, I'm right here."

The trickster almost laughed at Tony's words but he couldn't right now because he was having his first panic attack since he had learned that he was a frost giant. And in front of Tony no less, how embarrassing. But he couldn't really think of that right now because he was staring down at the human's hands clasped with his and saw the difference in their skin color and knew that Tony could see his true self, he could see everything that Loki had been hiding.

Blue, it's blue, everything is blue. Tony, Tony can see, Stark, Anthony, Darling, he can see you. He'll hate you.' A voice whispered in his head, sounding like a combination of Odin, Frigga, Thor, his children and most of all himself. Loki heard a small whimper leave his lips and he curled further into himself. 'Tony, blue, Tony hates blue, I hate blue, I hate Tony, no, no no no. I hate blue, and Victor and everyone except Tony. Victor…..' He pictured dead eyes and teeth clashing together, both of them refusing to scream when they were together and trying to force the other to, always a competition. 'Fight, hate, scream, trick, lie, Victor understands, he lets me, not your baby, baby, babe, honey, dear, darling, love.' Tony had pulled him into his lap as he shook and retreated into himself and was stroking his hair and kissing his temples, murmuring sweet nothings in his ear. 'Sweet nothings, nothing is sweet, everything is wrong, Victor is wrong, I am wrong, Tony. Cut, bleed, make it stop, bleeding blue. Blue, blue, blue, everything is blue. Not Tony, red and gold and black, everything except blue. I just really love you ok. Perfect, so perfect, imperfect, why can't things be perfect?'

"Things can become perfect." Tony says loudly, cutting through the thoughts that had weaving and wrapping and suffocating the god's mind. Loki glanced up at him shocked; really terrified the Tony had heard all of that, all of that madness that lived in his head. Because surely he would leave now, just like everyone else had left once they figured out that he couldn't be fixed. The human put a warm hand on his cheek, dark, heady eyes tender and melting. "Really love, you should stop talking so much, let someone else get a word in."

"I" Loki breathed in deeply, feeling the rawness of his throat and wondered distantly for how long he had been babbling, letting out all of his thoughts, dumping all of his madness on this poor man. With a shudder he pulled internally, draping his normal form over the jotun one, feeling his skin bleed back to its normal paleness, he blinked and felt his eyes practically turn in his head and knew that once he opened them that he was gazing at Tony through emerald instead of crimson. "I'm sorry" He whispered, unconsciously running fingers over the old scars on his left wrist. 'Cut, bleed, bleeding blue.'

Tony put a hand over his wrist, eyes no longer so melting and filled with a different heat now, something that made Loki sit up a little straighter. "I don't want you cutting." The avenger says voice deadly serious.

"I'm not; I haven't, not in awhile." Loki says, glancing down at his hands again, skin pale and normal and looking almost human next to Tony's tanned, weathered hands.

He can practically hear the bitter, twisting smile that is probably tugging at the human's lips and refuses to glance up; he doesn't want to see that, he can't stand to see that. "You've left those scars there for a reason; they've been there since I've known you. I don't like that Loki."

"I don't like it when you drink." The trickster replies, finally glancing back up at Tony, shaking his overgrown hair out of his eyes and offering up his own twisted grin "How about you stop doing that?" He's not being serious, of course he isn't, or at least he doesn't want Tony to think he's being serious, he's tired of being serious. But he's getting pretty tired of joking and lying and tricking too, he's getting pretty tired of everything at this point.

Everything except those eyes gazing at him like he is some precious treasure that most be worshipped and lavished with attention.

He'll never get tired of that.

Tony smiles again, a slighter smile, less bitter and more real, something small and hidden about it that makes Loki feel like he's being entrusted to some great secret. The human scoots a bit closer to him and leans in, brushing their lips together with a tender familiarity.

That's another thing he'll never get tired of.

Loki lets a soft happy breath of air escape him as Tony sucks gently on his top lip, it's a quiet type of kiss, very different from most of their exchanges. Normally they are heated and long and drawn out and pushing and pulling each other to the very brink of sanity but this, this is kind and nurturing, this is a gentle sort of reassurance, something to assure the other that they are right here and they aren't going anywhere.

Finally with a sigh Tony pulls away from him, eyes half lidded and face relaxed. "Ok"

It takes Loki a few long seconds to figure out what Tony's talking about then he remembers, no cutting, no drinking. "Really?" he asks, almost, almost hopeful, because if anyone could fix him…..if anyone could save him and make him whole…..

The human grins at him, looking a bit more like the genius playboy that he is and a bit less like the desperate madman that Loki had seen too many times. "Yeah Loki" He leans forward to kiss him again "We'll get better together."

Many hours later, after ignoring countless calls and drinking too much coffee as they watched the Malibu sunset they decided to get rid of all those goddamn tabloids. They were happily thrown into a pile in the backyard and burnt by a fire that was tinted green. Then they spent a couple more hours ignoring their responsibilities (Aka Fury and Pepper) in favor of paying attention to each other. And at around 1 in the morning there was a pop that made all of Malibu rub at their ears because at that moment Tony Stark's tremendously huge stock of alcohol had disappeared, most likely shoved into some unused dimension. A half second later the two men were sitting cross legged on Tony's bed, staring down at Loki's bare arms as the god muttered in some fluid, musical language. Inch by inch the skin started to rework itself, the scars getting smaller and smaller until they vanished and both arms were unsullied.

"There now that wasn't so hard was it?" Tony asked grinning, he's had too much coffee but so has Loki and he knows that his smile is just as manic.

"Shut up darling" He laughs, leaning towards the human to kiss him again and he wonders if this is what honeymoons are like, this odd, wonderful bliss. He considers asking Tony but the human looks so happy and perfect and right that Loki just decides to kiss him again.

He's pretty sure it's his favorite decision that he's ever made.

Ahhh wow I'm done. And ok this was supposed to be a funny chapter, i don't even know what happened good lord. But anyways thank you all so much for the support throughout this story! I'll definitely be writing some more for this pairing once I finish up my other two stories. Please review and let me know if you liked it!

Also, if anyone has any requests for oneshots or songfics for whatever pairing you like I'd be glad to do it!