A/N: Told you I'd get it up quick. This is the last chapter, by the way.

Chapter 15: New Year's

This was Tony and Loki's kind of shopping. A trolley each, acquiring everything a budding young inventor would need in his workshop. Loki handled tech while Tony handled tools. When they'd gotten necessary things, they proceded to get unnecessary things, like a mobile of the solar system, and for whatever reason Loki fabricated, a funny-looking paper clip dispenser.

Then they headed to the checkout. The person there didn't look so happy at having to scan all their stuff.

Despite the abuse that Loki's teleportation had been getting, they were using it to move everything to Harley's house. The jet would take too long. Evidently Loki was celebrating his new invulnerable status. Tony wasn't so enthusiastic, so he was taking an older Iron Man suit. He had enough heart issues without that.

Loki decided to don the Lightningrod suit, simply because Harley clearly liked the Avengers.

"I'll race you," he told Tony from the balcony of Stark Tower.

"You're moving at the speed of light," Tony pointed out. "I don't think I'm going to win that race."

"Excuses, excuses," Loki said, placing his hands on the huge box they'd picked to move everything and vanishing.

Tony activated his repulsors and headed for Tennessee. Loki was such a sarcastic ass.

-O.O-

It was Boxing Day, so Harley's absence at his house was rather odd, but Tony and Loki didn't question it. It was a pretty simple matter for them to break into his workshop, considering teleportation.

"This is why I'm wary of making this technology publicly available," Loki said as they began setting everything up. "I wouldn't trust the general public with this ability."

Tony was about to point out Loki's cat-burgling streak while he was under Malekith's influence, but wisely decided to hold his tongue.

After the hundredth time Loki smacked his horns or got them caught on something, he gave a loud noise of exasperation and took them off, dumping them on the floor.

"Why horns?" Loki said. "Who wears horns?"

"You," Tony said. "They make you look taller and skinnier. Also more like Satan."

"That's a bonus, I suppose," Loki conceded.

They only finished setting everything up as they heard footsteps and the scrape of a key in a lock. Nice timing.

Loki shoved his helmet back on and stood to attention as Harley came in, Tony standing beside him. The Iron Man suit helped support his sore hip.

Harley's jaw dropped as he saw them. Then he noticed the changes to his workshop and it was pretty clear he was overcome. He took it in for half a minute, eyes wide, then ran forward and wrapped his arms around the pair of them as much as he could.

Harley looked up at them. "Thank you."

"Thank you for looking after Tony for me," Loki countered with a smile.

"Enough stuff here for you to start on your Mark 2 Potato Gun," Tony said.

Harley's curiosity got the better of him and he started examining everything. "What does this do?"

"Everything has instruction manuals," Tony said. "Also, we didn't buy anything you might accidently behead yourself with. We have standards."

Harley made a face. "I could handle it."

"Admittedly, yes, but we might not be able to handle the lawsuit," Loki said, coming over and helping him with whatever doohickey he'd decided to try first.

They ended up spending what remained of the afternoon there, teaching Harley some tricks they'd picked up in their years of practical experience.

The sun was just heading down when they headed back to New York, picking Pepper up on the way. Nearly everything had been sorted out, though there was no doubt that their argument with Fury regarding Maya would come back to bite them in the proverbial ass.

In the end, they went to Loki's penthouse, improvised some form of dinner, then lay around on Loki's favourite couch in the living room drinking, talking, and watching rain splatter against the windows.

After the conversation turned to Harley, Loki paused for a moment and said "I don't want children; I dearly hope that's not a dealbreaker."

Tony wasn't surprised, and he told Loki so. "It's okay. I'm not even sure if I do either."

"I've been there, and found it not to my liking," Loki said.

Tony knew what Loki was talking about, even if they'd never properly discussed it; Loki's brief experience with fatherhood in his teens when his messing around caught up with him and an ex-fling of his got pregnant. Loki had stood by her, but she'd overdosed and the kid was prematurely stillborn.

Admittedly, Tony had had pregnancy scares, but none that panned through. He was surprisingly careful even when not sober.

"What was its name going to be?" Tony asked.

"Hela," Loki said. "I know it's an odd name, but Angie liked it."

Tony patted Loki's thigh in consolation.

"I'm not especially broken up about it," Loki said. "It would have changed my life hugely, and probably not for the better."

"Yeah, but still," Tony said. "No kids. That's not a dealbreaker."

They sat in silence for a while, Tony propping his feet up on Loki's legs.

"Tomorrow," Loki said, "We study magic. Any thoughts?"

"Firstly, figure out what the hell it is. Getting readings of it. Every kind of reading. Measure its blood alcohol content if we have to. Identification is the first step to doing something," Tony said.

"The scanner you made for the Tesseract would likely be effective," Loki mused. "You really should look into marketing it."

"Yeah, I talked to Pepper about it. She doesn't think enough people would be interested," Tony said.

"I want one," Loki said.

"Done and done. Consider it your Christmas present."

-O.O-

The next day was mostly spent with Malekith and several scanners. The elf was simply to produce examples of magic on command while they analysed it to their hearts' content.

They discovered little about the actual nature of magic, and Malekith didn't really seem to know either. It was the energy of existing and he was a conductor, but that was as much help as he could give them.

It was fun anyway.

After that, Tony and Loki played around in the lab with the personal teleporter until someone upstairs bit the bullet and cooked dinner, then they headed upstairs to socialise.

The day after, they took Pepper back to Malibu, visiting Happy along the way, then took Maya to her old apartment. She'd decided that she didn't want to live there anymore, and in light of her new venture, was heading across the country to New York. It was closer to her family too.

Tony and Loki had begun to make everything official. FuturePharm (the name had sadly stuck) was becoming a legitimate thing. Loki was clearing out one of his smaller R&D labs in his tower for Maya.

Fury hadn't said a word yet. No news was potentially bad news.

That night, they went to their first party together, a pretty big one that was drawing in attendees by not being on New Year's Eve. It was a bit of an adventure, going out as a couple for the first time.

And it was good. No one made any disparaging remarks, at least to their faces. They danced and chatted to people and if Loki's hand never strayed from the small of Tony's back, then hey, he wasn't complaining. Apparently their limit was dancing with other people, though; they were revelling in being able to stick ridiculously close to each other without comments being made.

They didn't stay out too long, however; Tony's hip was better, but it started to ache after a few hours out and about.

In the car home, they were laughing to each other about how Tony had mispronounced 'organism' while talking to some stuck-up society prig, and Loki had his feet on Tony's lap and a grin on his face.

They were so stupidly happy, it was almost sickening.

As they got back up to Loki's penthouse and headed for bed, Tony paused them and said "Loki, I'll ask you properly and not in the same super sudden way as last time. Will you marry me?"

Loki sat down on the bed and smiled up at him. "It'd be my pleasure, Mr Stark."

"Don't you 'Mr Stark' me," Tony said, pushing Loki on the shoulder playfully.

"Mr Laufeyson-Stark, then," Loki corrected impishly.

"Stark-Laufeyson," Tony said.

Loki narrowed his eyes. "This could turn into a very serious debate."

They didn't reach any form of compromise.

-O.O-

The next few days were a blur of science, visiting Happy, occasionally helping Maya move into her new apartment and generally hanging out.

Tony and Loki had decided that in the spirit of the previous year, their New Year's tradition was to get drunk and complain about things until they thought messing around with fruit was a good idea.

They had, in fact, settled down in Loki's penthouse with a carton of cherries and alcohol within reach.

"One question that I never got around to," Tony said. "Why'd you come to see me last year? We didn't get along then."

Loki took a fortifying swig of tequila before answering. "I knew of your issues with your father," he said.

"Yeah, I guessed that bit. Why then, though?"

"Several boxes of Farbauti's belongings arrived for me," Loki deadpanned, his face very intentionally shutting down. "One of which was some of my childhood objects that he had neglected to give to Frigga."

It was clear that pushing the subject would just upset Loki, so Tony gave him a cherry as a form of subject change.

Loki examined it speculatively. "I've popped all my cherries."

Tony starting laughing involuntarily at the serious look on Loki's face. "Same here," he added. "True tragedy."

"I didn't drink for a month while I had the arc in my chest," Loki said mournfully. "I missed it."

"That's probably not healthy, but never mind," Tony said. "I know the feeling."

Loki handed him a cherry stem. "Try it. I believe in your oral dexterity."

"You make everything sound dirty," Tony complained as he popped the stem in his mouth, fully intending to successfully knot it.

"Master," SADIE interrupted. "I do believe there's something I should call to your attention."

"What is it?" Tony asked impatiently, spitting it out.

SADIE activated a projector, showing a YouTube page.

The footage was grainy and depicted the Miami docks where everything had gone down on Christmas Day; it was definitely security footage.

That caught their attention. They both sat up and focused.

Odds were, some employee on security had heard about the whole drama and had trawled back through records to have a look at what happened, then, naturally, uploaded it to the internet.

Out of context and blurry, it looked bad. All traces of Extremis weren't visible. The viewer would see Loki - easily recognisable as Lightningrod - pinning an unknown man to a shipping container, arguing with Iron Man while occasionally slamming the man's head into the metal. Then Loki shocked him, began to walk away and then whirled around and broke the man's neck for seemingly no reason at all.

It was bad. It was very bad.

The comments underneath said two things: Loki was a BAMF or Loki was a crazy sonovabitch who should be kicked off the Avengers.

"I'll bet Fury knows," Loki muttered. "In fact, I'd go so far as to say SHIELD will make a public statement explaining this and defending me if we just agree to let them have Extremis."

"Well, I doubt you're wrong," Tony breathed. "This is very not good."

"Fuck," Loki snarled. "I knew he wouldn't leave it be, but this is dirty pool."

"S'alright, babe, if there's anything we know how to do, it's argue," Tony said reassuringly.

"This could become viral. SADIE, take it down if possible. It portrays a man dying; there must be rules against that," Loki said. "This is bad news for my reputation and for the Avengers."

"Well, we assumed that Fury was going to disband us. Guess he's taking us down in flames," Tony said. "I'm gonna tear him a new asshole."

"I'm not going to let him," Loki said, his eyes flashing red in anger. "After all, FuturePharm has the fire."

A/N: On to the next one! My intention at the moment is to write the multi-chapter lead up to the wedding, and the wedding. What happens afterwards is an odd and complicated plot that I likely won't write due to public lack of interest in the story.

But hey, this is over. Thanks for reading. Thanks for putting up with my shitty updating. You're a superstar, wherever and whoever you are.