A/N: Betaed by Mad As A Hatter 13

Arthur stared at the phone in his hand. What had he just done? He'd... he'd said he'd be working on things, hadn't he. That wasn't what he wanted to say at all, he hadn't wanted to give Tony any sort of false hope, there was no hope for them but... but it occurred to him and then he couldn't not say it. It was stupid and a terrible idea and he shouldn't want it, but he wanted it anyway so he said... he said...

And he'd meant it, Arthur realised.

He had no idea what working on things might actually entail, but if Tony told him there was something he could do to make him less angry then... well he'd do it. The list of things he would do for Tony was growing, and the list of things he wouldn't was becoming painfully short.

Despite Arthur's best attempt at ripping them apart, Tony had gotten under his skin.

And the only thing more terrifying than that thought was that Arthur couldn't picture it being any other way.

.

"Nick Fury is paging the Avengers."

"Alright, pull him up," Tony waved at the nearby holographic wall, "let's hear what he wants."

"Stark," Fury greeted, when he saw that Tony was alone, "There's been more portal activity, much closer to Loki's signature this time."

"We have a location?" Tony asked.

"It was just a short burst, so we didn't have time to pinpoint an exact location, but we have a general area. I want you scanning with whatever tech you have and you all suited up ASAP."

"Right. Did anything come through this time?"

"Not positive, but quite likely."

"Alright J, let's get this show on the road.

.

"Why did this asshole have to choose the north pole of all fucking places to open a freaking portal," Clint muttered.

"It's not exactly the north pole," Bruce pointed out, "It's at least—"

"You would not believe how much I don't care how far off it is. It hella cold and fucking miserable, alright."

"Who pissed in your cheerios?" Tony muttered.

"Stark!" Clint growled.

"Can we keep it down?" Steve called from the front of the quinjet. "We do actually have a job out here. Stark, we're at the edge of the Shield coordinates, what can you give us."

"The epicentre is definitely more north than this, but not by much. An educated guess would put it further east too, but Shield really did not give me much to work with."

"Scanners picking up anything?"

"Nothing but ice and snow, Cap." Natasha called from the pilot's chair.

"Right. Looks like we'll have to do this manually. Bruce, Clint, Natasha, we're going out on foot, opposite directions try to cover as much ground as possible. Tony, Thor, you're in the air try to spiral outwards. Keep in radio contact, we don't want to lose anyone else out here, okay?"

"Alright. We got this."

.

Tony blasted over another pile of ice which looked just like all the other piles of ice he'd recently flown over. God there was nothing out here. Jarvis was scanning everything he could, but things had completely calmed down after whatever sort of activity had occurred here.

He shot Thor a cheerful wave as the Asgardian was kicking down a suspicious looking pile of snow to reveal even more nothingness.

Natasha was moving with power, climbing up ice piles to get a better vantage point, while Steve seemed to be avoiding them, not that Tony blamed him, and told Tony to get back to work when he lingered for too long. Bruce shot him a dirty look when Tony laughed at his ridiculous over layered faux fur monstrosity he and shield agreed was actual winter wear and Clint... Clint actually seemed to have found something.

Tony landed beside him to find him staring at a blue figure half buried in a snow bank. At his signal Tony cut their contact to the rest of the Avengers.

"Clint?" Tony asked, curiously. His friends eyes were completely glued to the unmoving possibly dead alien in the snow.

"Doesn't he look like Loki to you?" Clint's voice seemed very far away.

"His skin is blue—"

"But if you re-coloured him."

Tony was prepared to scoff entirely, but then the figure shifted and... Clint was right. It was an exact duplicate of Loki, painted in different colours.

The figure shifted slowly, as if waking from a restful nap, before catching sight of the two of them, shooting backwards in surprise and revealing numerous off coloured scorch marks and several cuts oozing dark purple blood.

"Please don't shoot me, I mean you no harm, I swear I was only trying to get away, I promise I won't do anything like last time, just please don't let me go back to them—"

"Loki?" Tony asked. The blue figure nodded.

"Why are you here?" Clint's voice was dark.

"I swear I wasn't going to hurt anyone, it just hurt so much and I just needed to get away, please don't send me back to them, please don't let them take me, I promise I won't do anything to you ever again just please don't let him take me."

"Do you swear to cause no harm while you're here?!" Clint roared advancing on Loki.

"I swear I swear! I'll do anything, just please don't send me back to him."

"I don't know who He is," Tony said, "But we need to alert Shield."

"No!" Clint snapped, as Loki collapsed again in the snow, and Tony took a cautious step backwards.

"Clint buddy, are you feeling okay?"

"You haven't heard what Shield plans to do to him once they have him!"

"But why be merciful to him at all!?"

"You don't know what it was like!" Clint screamed. "I was in his head Tony. I was in his head. And he wasn't alone. There's something else out there, something huge and evil and it was always watching. Watching and judging and correcting and correcting actions when Loki wasn't doing it right."

"Jesus..."

"You can't tell shield alright. You can't!"

"Alright but... what do we do with him then. Someone has to watch him to make sure he doesn't get up to anything."

"He can't stay in America, Tony, shield's grip is to strong there, and they'll find him and then... He has to go somewhere else."

"And you don't have any brilliant ideas?"

"Uhm..."

"Alright. Lemme call someone. It'll be a long shot getting him to agree to this. And you'll owe me, big time."

"Okay."

"And if he goes nuts and kills more people it's on you."

"I know."

"And you want to do this why? He's untrustworthy, and any promise he makes screaming his head off can't be counted on."

"I know you can't trust him," Clint snapped, "and neither can I. But I know him. And it's a terrible idea, why are you agreeing to this?"

"I may not trust him, but I trust you."

"Oh. Okay. Awesome. Make that phone call, man."

.

Arthur stood on his back porch watching a Stark Industries helicopter on his lawn at three in the morning.

It felt perfectly normal to be standing there, drinking tea, even though his mind was still reeling with the ridiculousness of what he was doing. This was such a terrible idea and was nothing at all like what Ivan had meant when he said talk to Tony but Arthur was doing it, for some reason.

He headed out onto the lawn once the chopper blades started to slow. Tony Stark grins at him and flicks the door open and Arthur is suddenly surprised that there is no one in the machine with him.

"No pilot?" he asked.

"Please," Tony groaned, "As if I would let some random stranger learn where you live."

Tony was mostly joking, because he'd already done that, not that the alien in the back really cared, but it managed to capture the seriousness of the moment as well.

"Why didn't you take a suit?"

"This is a stealth mission. Iron Man is many things but stealthy isn't one of them."

Arthur smirked inwardly at Tony openly admitting a flaw in his design, but calmed when he entered the helicopter to find the unconscious figure.

His limbs were long and bony, and his skin was blue dusted with grey blue swirls. When Arthur reached to brush a tentative hand over his elbow his skin fades to humanlike pink which slowly spread over his body, while his hair remained matted, black, and covered with dried blood.

With the humanlike colours, he looked malnourished and gorgeous. He reminded Arthur of his kind, maintaining the same image even when crumbling and starving, which meant the few wounds on his skin were probably minor marks compared to what he'd suffered.

"You sure you can handle him?" Tony whispered.

"He can't kill me, and there's nothing he can do to hurt me that hasn't been done before. I'll be fine."

"You can have your faerie friends look after him, right?"

Arthur felt like he just got emotional whiplash, pulled from solemn reminiscing to a trembling sense of awe because no one had ever done that before. Sure Ivan believed him when he'd told him about them, but Tony was actually relying on...

"Of course." His voice trembled, but it was okay. Tony believed him, Tony believed him, Tony believed him.

The moment sustained until Arthur realised it was probably awkward, and he moved to pick the alien up.

"Careful," Tony said, "He's deceptively heavy."

And he was. Approximately the same weight as Ivan, and the alien looked about half his size. Arthur actually had to apply the muscles long in disuse to get him smoothly off the floor, but once in his arms it was easy enough to maneuver him.

Tony followed as Arthur placed the alien in the guest room across from his own. He shifted a bit as the covers were pulled over him, but remained unconscious.

"Do you wanna stay the night or..." Arthur trailed off. God this was so awkward. He used to know how to talk to this man.

"Nah, I need to head back, Fury is pissed at me enough as it is. But you'll call me when he wakes, right?"

"Of course."

"And if anything goes wrong, I'm just a phone call away."

"Alright."

"I don't expect him to stick around for too long, just enough to recover and then keep moving, but let me know if he says anything, okay."

"Tony. It'll be fine. Go do what you need to do so you can come back."

Arthur felt like he was saying things he might regret later, but it was taking all his concentration to just not stare at Tony's lips, god that man was unfairly pretty, but he wouldn't. Couldn't. They'd broken up for a reason, Goddamnit.

"Yeah, with like seventy arms-full of tech so I can upgrade this old house of yours."

"I like this house." Arthur growled.

"I won't change anything big without your permission," Tony defended, "And if he decides to stick around for a while I wanna make sure Jarvis can keep an eye on you."

"Oh." Well. That was really sweet and should probably be creepy but it somehow just wasn't. "Cool." Shake it off Arthur, shake it off.

.

Loki woke slowly, only drifting into full awareness when he realised he was no longer on rock solid floor. He lay as still as he could, trying to figure out where he was before he opened his eyes. He'd been in his cell like normal, heat of the fire curling into his skin, but they'd messed up and he had run and—

Cold. It had been so refreshingly cold, cooling the wounds and the anger and... he'd been found. The one he'd dragged down with him and the one in the metal suit had found him. He must be with them then.

He opened his eyes to find himself in a bed. The sheets were smooth, and his filthy body had smeared dirt and crusted blood all over them. The room was plainly furnished, white walls, small brown tables, dark wood trim, and a small window with deep green curtains over it. It was plain given Asgard's standards, but it was so much more than Loki expected, given that he was a prisoner.

Come to think of it, shouldn't there be manacles on his arms, a muzzle on his face?

Shouldn't there be people watching him?

He waited, listening, but there seemed to be no activity now that he was awake. Loki stretched cautiously, as this was probably just a ruse trying to get him to relax. Still, an opportunity was an opportunity, and Loki used it to test out his strength. His legs wobbled but held, and his fingers felt stiff and wouldn't move quite right, but altogether he hadn't lost as much upper body strength as he might have. He crossed the room pulling open the curtains revealing blue skies and an open expanse of green grass bordered by trees.

There were slow footsteps down the hallway and then the door opened revealing a short blonde man with piercing green eyes and bushy eyebrows. His clothes indicated the midgardian sense of formality but his body language was relaxed and unafraid as he leaned against the doorframe.

"Ahh, good to see you awake."

Loki inclined his head in acknowledgement, trying to purse out whom exactly the man was. Was he supposed to be Loki's jailer? He didn't seem very intimidating. Or like much of a fighter.

"I'm Arthur Kirkland, a friend of Tony's." The man introduced.

"Tony?"

"Iron Man."

Ahh so that was how it went. The metal man had been convinced to pass him off to a friend rather than informing the authorities of Loki's presence. He'd regret that.

"and you are?" the stranger

let the words hang. Loki raised his eyebrow. Did this fool truly not know? Something must have showed on his face because the man then said, "oh I know what they say about you. But I'd rather not make assumptions and just hear it from you yourself."

"And you are supposed to be my jailer?" Loki scoffed.

"Nope," the stranger responded. "This isn't a jail, you're free to go wherever you like, though we are in the middle of nowhere so there really isn't much of anywhere to go. I'm going to make sure you adhere to your promise of not harming anyone during your stay on this planet. But as long as you do that, anything I have is yours to use."

Oh damnit. In his earlier desperation, he'd made that promise hadn't he? But he'd have a place to stay and free food as long as he could keep his act together, if this person was being honest.

"And why should I believe you?" Loki questioned. The other man shrugged.

"I personally don't care if you do or don't. I'm not doing this for you. But I am being honest, and doubting everything I say because you feel like you have to is only going to create more headaches for you, but whatever floats your boat."

Loki frowned but nodded. He already liked this man just the tiniest bit because of his proclaimed disinterest in gaining Loki's trust. Of course he may be lying, but that made things so much easier for Loki.

"Come on, let's get you some food, and then you can wash the crap out of your hair. And bandage your wounds if you want."

"If I want?"

The stranger shrugged. "I dunno how aliens heal. Maybe it's super fast, or promoted by eating protein or rubbing rosemary on it or some shit. I'm assuming you know your limits and you'll bandage anything you think needs it."

"Ah." Well. What a very reasonable assumption.

Loki trailed behind as the stranger lead him up a short hallway and up a few stairs, around a corner into a large room Loki assumed to be his kitchen.

"You can cook stuff if you want. I'll be doing as little of it as possible cause my cooking sucks, but there's not much else you can do in the middle of nowhere. You can eat what I make, or you can make your own stuff, but you don't get to complain about it if you chose the former. Anyways for right now we're going to stick with something really simple."

The stranger moved to open the door on a sealed white cupboard and coldness trickled into the air. He removed several items from a smaller box, closing the cold door and placing the round objects in another contraption. He raised an eyebrow at Loki's undoubtedly confused expression but explained without Loki having to make a fool of himself by asking stupid questions.

"That's a refrigerator, abbreviated to fridge. It keeps things cold which means they rot slower or don't rot at all. This is a toaster," he pointed at the other contraption. "You put things in it approximately this size," he held up one of the round objects, "push this lever and it heats up, and warming the contents. You only put bread like substances in it though."

"Ahh. So what are you making?" Loki felt a small shiver of concern as the strangers face lit up.

"Toaster waffles."

A/N: Unfortunately the author of this fic detests American Football, so there will be none of that. But to the people who suggested Loki trying skittles, roller coasters, the joys of cooking with various nations, and snowball fights, I'm totally going to include those. If you guys have any more brilliant ideas, let me know and I'll try to make it happen.

I have a tumblr account now, not that I do much with it, and you can check it out (It's the same name as here).

This fic will shortly be up on AO3 as well, if any of you would prefer to read it there.

Thanks for reading!

~RosemaryBagels