Tony isn't going to fuck the God of Lies. He isn't. It would be a terrible, awful, super-bad-wrong decision. Loki is a war criminal with a weird nose. He's bony, awkward, and unrepentant. Nothing redeeming about him.

But Tony is drunk at ten in the morning, so none of that stuff matters. Here's what does:

Loki is standing in the middle of the UN assembly, in a suit two sizes too small and hair four inches longer than it was two years ago. He looks like a scarecrow beside his brother, even though he towers over nearly every human in the room. Every time he speaks, the sentence starts with pardon my interruption and ends with if it pleases the Council.

In the twenty minutes since Tony walked in thirty minutes late, Loki has looked over his shoulder four times to check him out. Two of those four times their eyes met, and Tony felt like he was looking in a funhouse mirror. Himself, in another face. Tired, haunted, wondering what the fuck he's doing here. And although the thought of kissing anyone makes Tony throw up in his mouth, Loki's lips look like the most delicious thing he's seen since Pepper walked out a year ago.

Self control is not his virtue, so it's a damn good thing he's in public, on Avengers business, with breath that could wake the dead. Otherwise he'd have Loki's slacks around his ankles in the backseat of the Mercedes by now.

"Two o'clock, blue tie?" Steve says under his breath, and Tony shakes out of his stupor. Right, work. He's supposed to be working security, not ogling a psychopath. The media will have a field day if he's caught stumbling and leering.

Following Steve's direction, he checks out the potential threat. Short dude, kind of chubby and squinting at his phone. He activates the highly invasive and extremely illegal signal interceptor he finished programming this morning over whiskey glass number three. The guys' web page appears on Tony's sunglasses.

Facebook, ugh. Typical. Boring.

He shakes his head at Cap. "Stalking his grand kids."

Steve looks perturbed. Tony laughs internally, and realizes it wasn't as internal as he planned when Steve huffs and crosses his arms.

"Will you take this seriously?" he asks, and Tony doesn't bother answering. Classic Capsicle. Always on the job.

By the time he tunes back in to the proceedings it's Loki's turn to sign his amnesty agreement. And ain't that a treasure. Loki, invader of New York, is about to become a legal citizen of Earth because his brother went on strike. Unbelievable.

A murmur ripples through the assembly when Loki whips out a knife from nowhere. It's a little thing, maybe three inches long with a loop on the end for throwing. Tony doesn't notice at first, because the movement shifts Loki's weight to one leg, and that makes the too-small pants cup his ass like spandex. God, he really shouldn't be drunk right now, he's at least two seconds behind everyone else in the room.

Fortunately Loki isn't looking to assassinate anyone. While every security guard and superhero in the room aims their weapons, he draws the blade down his own thumb and presses the bloody finger to the contract. Because signing his name with a pen would just be too pedestrian.

The blade vanishes with a pop and Tony can't look away. As a scientist and a rabid consumer of made-for-TV movies he needs to know how that works. There has to be a logical explanation. Aliens don't just beam down on Einstein-Rosen bridges and casually break the laws of physics.

Then Loki sticks his thumb in his mouth to stop the bleeding and Tony doesn't give a shit about physics. He's transfixed by the play of thin lips on a long finger, and the distracted flick of Loki's eyes reflexively checking all the room's exits. It's a blend of habitual and anxious that Tony knows vividly, and when their eyes meet for the third time it feels charged. Like getting zapped by static electricity. Then Thor claps Loki on the shoulder and the moment's broken. Loki brushes off his brother's hand and disappears into the atrium.

Normally Happy hangs on to Tony's effects, but the UN's rules don't have exceptions for famous billionaires. The line for the coat check is so long he almost mistakes it for the women's bathroom. Leaving the damn jacket is an appealing option, but it's April and his car keys are in the pocket. Sighing, he pulls out his flask and resigns himself to handling at least three intrusive reporters while he waits.

Contestant number one walks up behind him in less than thirty seconds. Wonderful. She's pretty tall for a woman, slim with black hair.

"What's your number?" she asks, in a posh accent that ticks his radar. The room is loud, and he doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about. He has to lean in and shout to be heard.

"Don't you people have spies or hackers or something for that?" he says, and her nose wrinkles at his breath. Ah, great, he just indirectly told a reporter he's day drinking. Three guesses what tomorrow's tabloids are gonna be.

But the woman's eyes don't light up and turn sharply observant like a reporter's would.

She purses her lips and asks, "Who in their right mind needs a spy to retrieve a coat?"

And then it clicks. Weird nose, thin lips, haughty accent.

"Loki?"

"Oh for the love of Höðr." she says, slipping her hand into his suit pocket and digging around. She pulls out a neon orange card.

It's probably a bad thing that he doesn't react at all to her invading his space. He could blame it on the alcohol, but the truth is he didn't feel threatened. It just wouldn't make sense for her to attack him now, surrounded by witnesses and after months of playing nice.

"Did you just ask me out?" he says, and she disappears. Poof, gone.

The crowd mills about, and he's momentarily baffled. He must be more hammered than he thought, if he's blacking out like that. Maybe he grabbed the wrong flask and he's drinking Thor's Vanir rum again. Dumbly, he pulls out his stash and sniffs. Smells like whiskey. He's about to put it back, but then he figures he ought to have a sip to double check. Just to be safe. Yeah, tastes like whiskey too. The container is nearly empty by now, and it's a damn good thing because Loki reappears while he's screwing on the cap and he almost showers her in booze. And his own Belstaff coat.

She holds it out for him, wearing a surly expression. "You ought to have this washed. I identified it by stench alone, once I found the right rack."

"Sure thing, princess." he says, taking it back and tossing it over his arm. "Do you look this way often?"

"Not when I have official business."

"What about when you don't?" he asks, genuinely curious.

Loki's nostrils flare, but her face is stoically blank. "My private life is none of your concern. And, no. I was not asking you out."

She pulls on her coat, a green and black leather monstrosity that hangs off her like a bathrobe. He supposes it would be hard to find clothes that fit when your height changes by eight inches on the fly.

"Shame." Tony says, shrugging, and uncaps the flask again. He'd consider sobering up if she was interested. But she's not, so he might as well.

Loki eyes the booze as he tips it back. Maybe it's her stiff posture, or the awkward stillness of her stance, but once he's done his eyes go right to the fidgeting hand at her side. A manicured nail picks at the scab on her thumb, the fresh cut inflamed and starting to bleed again. He slips the flask in his back pocket and points.

"You want a band-aid for that?"

"A what?"

Tony snorts. For some reason he expected Loki to be more worldly than Thor. Evidently not.

"A bandage? Medical attention?"

Loki sniffs, turning on her heel. "I'm perfectly fine, thank you."

"Let me know if you change your mind, I guess."

"I won't." she says, licking at the cut while she walks away in a coat that now fits just fine.

His eyes fixate on her mouth, and for the first time in his life he's glad his family jewels tend not to work when he's four doubles into a fifth. Because that would be the weirdest, most unwelcome boner of his life.

Tony does get his coat dry cleaned, but not because Loki complained. He does it because she left a recording bug in the lapel and his dry cleaner is a chatty busybody. He likes the idea of Loki listening through twelve hours of Italian arguing just to get to the part where Tony says 'Hey, princess' and cuts the feed.

Two nights after that stunt he comes home tipsy from a press conference to find Loki leaning on his bar in a cocktail dress. She says she's here for a band-aid, but he can't seem to find the scratch, even when he takes all her clothes off and gives her a thorough check up. He fucks the God of Lies, and it's exactly as dangerous as advertised. Because she's freaky, and savage, and secretly shy, and as far as he's concerned that's everything a man could want.

But that's not what really matters, because there are a million ways for genius billionaires to get laid. Here's what does:

Twenty-four hours after she talked her way into his bed, Loki shows up with buckshot in his sternum. Tony picks it out with a Kleenex and tweezers because Loki refuses to go to the lab. He doesn't ask what happened to the other guy.

Forty-eight hours later he has been fabricating for sixty hours straight. Loki breaks into the lab armed with hot wings from Buffalo and cold beer from Berlin. He tempts Tony back to the penthouse with petit fours from Paris and when he goes to drink his nightcap all of the flavors clash. So he stops at two shots and convinces Loki to tire him out instead.

Seventy-two hours after that Thor shows up to give him a piece of his mind. Tony shoves Loki into Bruce's biomaterials freezer and when he lets him out Loki's as blue as a smurf. Two pints of ice cream later, it occurs to him that Loki could have teleported to the penthouse and he'd never have known.

Ninety hours later they celebrate their nine day anniversary like they've been together nine years because neither of them can believe they made it this long. It starts as a joke, and ends with the two of them making out in a shrub in Staten Island hiding from the paparazzi. After downing eighteen bottles of Vodka Loki drunkenly names her breasts Asmund and Astrid, and Tony tells himself not to get attached.

One hundred and two hours after that he stops counting because it's been two weeks, and that calls for a new unit of measure.

All those things go right. They connect, they laugh, and occasionally bicker. It's unreal. Like a cheesy romcom with a perplexing amount of gore. Here's what goes wrong:

Loki comes and goes whenever he pleases and shows up injured half the time. He never says where he's been and he laughs when Tony gets concerned. One day he comes home with cigarette burns on his arm and claims he was just curious. They don't talk about it.

They do the nasty in varying states of inebriation, and one time Tony forgets to use a rubber. He asks Loki if they need a pregnancy test and finds out she has three kids imprisoned on three planets. They don't talk about it.

They have sex in the lab with the door unlocked and on the balcony with helicopters flying overhead. They put all the tabs in all the slots and Loki runs into the bathroom to puke halfway through giving him the best blowjob of his life. They don't talk about it.

Loki insists on silk sheets and gourmet food. She demands Tony's complete attention at all times, and asserts her independence anytime it's in question. But when they fuck his only guidelines are the tension in her spine and the varying looks of wonder and fear on her face. Once her panties hit the floor she never, ever says no.

And that scares the fuck out of him.

By the time he's halfway through the Prose Edda, Tony draws up plans for an intergalactic field trip. It's an exercise in getting ahead of himself, because they haven't talked about the godlings since their pregnancy scare three weeks ago. Unfortunately, he's not that great at turning his brain off. Between worrying about alien invaders and worrying about his worrying, it's a nice change of pace.

He builds himself an EVA suit in a couple days and takes it for a spin in the company pool. Then he makes one for Loki just because he feels like it. Next he tackles light speed travel and Loki's smart enough to know something's up. He corners Tony in the shower that night and even a round of wall sex doesn't distract him. So Tony sits him down on the floor beside the bed and brushes out his hair. It feels like holding a cracked snow globe and watching the white dots settle. Like admiring a tender, beautiful thing and knowing one more shake will shatter it.

"Which kid do you want to get first?" Tony asks, working at a tangle on Loki's neck.

Loki pulls his knees to his chest and hides his face in the gap. Expecting a fight or at least a disarming insult, Tony braces himself for the worst.

What comes is a near silent murmur.

"Hela." Loki whispers. "I want Hela."