Sorry this took awhile, anon. Hope it was worth the wait!
Two weeks after Tony Stark died, there’s a knock on May
Parker’s door.When she answers, there’s an unfamiliar man in a gray suit
so bland he could only be a lawyer.He gives her a small smile and says, “Ma’am, I’m here to
discuss Tony Stark’s will.”She slams the door in his face.
He comes back half an hour later, armed with coffee,
pastries, and Pepper Potts.“May,” Pepper greets warmly, a pained smile on her pale
face. Her makeup is flawless and May feels guilty about the mascara tracks down
her cheeks.“Pepper,” she says, wiping at her face. “Come in.”
She calls Peter from his room, and knows by the look of
dread on his face that he’s been listening in.They settle in the living room, Pepper graciously dispersing
the high-end baked goods on May’s chipped plates without any hesitation or
distaste in her features. She hands Peter a raspberry Danish, his favorite,
without asking what he wants, and May softens towards this intrusion. It’ll
hurt, but it hurts Pepper, too, so she can’t complain.The lawyer introduces himself as Robert Sharp, gets the
formal jargon over with, and then turns to Peter.“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Peter,” he says, and he sounds
sincere. “Mr. Stark talked about you often.”Peter nods shyly, burrows further into May’s side. She holds
his hand and resists the urge to kick the lawyer out again. Couldn’t Pepper
just tell them? It would be so much better from her.“As such, he has several benefits for you listed in his
will. First, a college fund set up in your name, sufficient to cover eight
years at any college of your choice. Second, this collection of brochures to the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” Peter snorts into May’s shoulder,
reaching out and taking the stack of glossy MIT handouts Mr. Sharp had pulled
out of his bag. Pepper’s lips twitch into a smile.“Third,” Mr. Sharp continues, “twenty-five percent of Mr.
Stark’s shares to Stark Industries. He has noted here that his stock portfolio
managers will continue to handle these until you are twenty-one. Fourth, he has
named you the director of the September Foundation, and all associated charities
and scholarship funds. This is a position that you will take up at the age of
twenty-five. I have quite a lot of literature and directions written up for you
at my office, I’ll make sure you get them.”Peter’s practically hyperventilating now. His eyes are so
full of tears, May is sure he can’t see.Robert hesitates, looking at Pepper for a moment. Her own
eyes are a little glassy, but she nods for him to continue.“Fifth, all the Iron Man suits that have not already been
donated, as well as all the land, facilities, and materials associated with the
team known as the Avengers. Again, these are to be claimed at the age of
twenty-five, unless, and I’m quoting here, ‘unless he has need of them sooner,
but he better not have need of them sooner.’”Peter sobs. He buries his face in his hands, his shoulders
shuddering. May rubs his back.“Are we done?” she asks.
“Not quite,” Robert says, looking apologetic. “The last items
listed for Peter are… DUM-E, U, and Butterfingers. There’s no explanation,
but I’m sure Mr. Parker knows what he means.”Peter sniffs, nodding.
“Great.” May stands, ready to shoo Robert the Lawyer out the
door so she can comfort her mourning nephew. “Now that that’s all taken care
of…”“Actually, Mrs. Parker, you’re listed as a beneficiary as
well.”She sits. Mostly because she’s lost feeling in her legs. “I’m in there?”
Robert nods. Pepper smiles patiently.
“Ok, well… read on, then,” she waves a hand at him,
feeling sick to her stomach. She doesn’t want anything. She doesn’t want to
benefit from Tony’s death.“Alright. To May Parker, the amount thirteen years of school
in New York City costs.” May blinks at Robert the Lawyer, then at Pepper who’s
mouth is pursed in a thin line to keep from crying, then back to Robert.“What?” She asks, her face flushing.
“There’s a note he requested I give you upon reading that,”
Robert adds, digging once again in his bag. It’s just a little slip of paper, with
Tony’s handwriting on it, familiar from notes about picking up Peter, or
dropping off Peter’s backpack when he forgot it at Tony’s.I know Peter isn’t my
son, but he’s as good as. If I had met him as a child I would have insisted on
paying for his schooling—taking care of a genius is no cheap task. You’ve done
so much for him, May. Let me do this much for you.May clenches her jaw, pulls Peter a little closer to her.
“What if I don’t want it?” May blurts out. She doesn’t want
any of it, knows Peter doesn’t either. They would turn down every cent if they
could have Tony back.Mr. Sharp smiles. “Mr. Stark was very careful. The money has
already been moved into your account. You can choose to not use it, I suppose,
but it is yours.”There are a few more technicalities they suffer through,
paperwork and things they’ll have to fill out at some point. Then Pepper is
wadding up the trash from their, mostly abandoned, treats and taking it to the
trash in the kitchen. She brushed off her pencil skirt, then smiles and May and
Peter again.“Just so you know, I’m renting out the floor just below the
penthouse of the Tower. Just half of it, mind, the other half is Tony’s lab.”
Her mouth thins again when she Tony’s name, and she takes a deep breath before
she continues. “I thought you might be interested, now that you’re a little…
more secure, financially. Here’s the listing information.” She hands May a
paper with a web address on it.“It was good to see you both,” Pepper says as she leaves.
Peter pulls out his second-hand laptop, types in the
address.The listed price is exactly the same as their current
apartment’s monthly rent. May scoffs, pulls her sleeves over her hands and
curls up in the corner of the couch, watching over Peter’s shoulders.There are two other bids on the apartment, which they get to
see because this is so obviously a ploy.The names are Charlotte Webber and Sheila and Bob Tolkien.
Peter stays frozen for a second as he looks at the not-at-all-subtle
hints that this apartment was for them and them only. Then he starts laughing.
Then he starts crying.May closes his laptop, takes it off his lap, and pulls him
into her arms.“We’ll go get moving boxes in the morning,” she says. Peter
nods against her shoulder, shaking with sobs.Peter doesn’t go into the lab that shares their floor for a
month after moving in. It’s a big adjustment, from their cramped two-bedroom,
seventh floor walk up, to the sweeping space of the penthouse of one of the
tallest skyscrapers in New York.When he does finally key in his code, the lab lights up.
Tony’s bots wake up, beeping at Peter sadly.“Peter,” FRIDAY greets. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Peter wanders around the space in a daze. He settles in his
usual chair, leaving Tony’s space untouched.“FRIDAY, do you… do you run yourself? Do diagnostics and
everything?”“Yes, though Boss usually goes through my code every month, just
to make sure I’m running correctly and there are no security breaches.”“Right.” He pauses. “I’m… I’m not that good at coding. You’d
have to teach me what to look for.”“I can do that,” FRIDAY says.
“And for my suit. I need to know how to keep Karen running.”
“I can do that, too,” she assures him.
Peter spends a lot of time with Pepper. They carry on with
Friday night dinners, Sunday night movie marathons, just like they had when
Tony was alive. They preserve his memory together, kept between the two people who
loved him most in the world. Peter feels less alone on those nights.May joins them most of the time, unless she’s working. It’s
a bit like having two moms, sometimes. They both nag him about sleeping, being
careful on patrol, they both feed him third helpings at every meal.Pepper’s care is different from Tony’s. She’s quiet where he
was loud, vocal when he would have been silent. But she does care, just like he
had.It’s not the same. But it’s ok.
When he goes to enter the lab, way past his curfew for the third
time that week, FRIDAY doesn’t open the door.“FRI?” he asks.
“I’m sorry, Peter. I am not allowed to let you in at night more
than twice a week. It’s part of the ‘I want you to be better’ protocol.”He goes on patrol instead. He’s sleep deprived and blinking
back tears and sloppy. He mutes Karen, turns off his phone.When he inevitably gets hurt, he swings one-handed all the
way back to the tower. Instead of his open window, he climbs a little higher, crawls
in through the bathroom window on Pepper’s floor.That’s where Pepper finds him, sitting in his bloody suit in
her bathtub, his mask off, one of her hand-towels pressed against his side.He’s crying. As soon as she sees him, she starts crying too.
“Oh, Peter,” she sighs. She gets the first-aid kit, then
climbs into the bathtub with him.She takes care of his cut first, sniffling all the while as
she dabs antiseptic through the torn suit. Then she pulls his head onto her
shoulder and holds him.“He wouldn’t want this,” she hiccups while Peter sobs into
her t-shirt. “He wouldn’t want you going out and getting hurt like this.”Peter gasps for enough breath to say, “I don’t know how to
fix the suit. I ruined it and I don’t know how to fix it.”He’s crying like a child, loud choking sobs ripping through
him. Pepper runs her hand through his hair like she’s trying to comfort him,
but she’s crying, too.“It’s ok.” He can barely understand the words through her
tears. “He would just want you to be alright. He never cared about the suit. It’s
ok.”Peter feels like Tony died all over again.
No amount of soothing can make him stop crying. He wants to
cry until he falls asleep, and wake up with Tony in his bed, like he used to
after a nightmare.“Peter?” he hears May ask. FRIDAY must have woken her up.
“May,” he whimpers, holding out one hand. He wants her to
hold him, too, wants the two of them to wrap their arms around him so tightly that
he stops feeling like he’s falling apart.She clambers into the bathtub, too, and there really isn’t
room for her, but they sit there together, a knot of messy, crying people.“I ripped the suit,” Peter confesses to May. She, like
Pepper, understands what he’s really saying. This was the last thing Tony did
for him, there were hours and hours of Peter and Tony in the lab built into
that suit, and he’d damaged it.“We’ll figure out how to fix it,” she promises him, pressing
kisses to his temple.Peter sobs again.
“Peter,” Pepper whispers. He looks up at her, her face
blurry through his tears. “He loved you so much.”May’s arm reaches across him, takes Pepper’s hand and
squeezes it. Peter closes his eyes again and lets himself cry, held between
these two women who love him.*For anyone who might have missed it, Sheila and Bob Tolkien was a reference to Shelob, the giant spider in the Lord of the Rings. Tony thinks he’s clever. (I, apparently, also think I’m clever).
Hi, I’m not crying, my eyes are just a little sweaty today
Tag: fic
an established relationship stevetony fic where steve’s picking up a book that tony left for him in his office when he sees small stack of papers on tony’s desk and right at the top it says divorce agreement.
his eyes stray a bit further down and he sees tony’s name on the document and suddenly he’s just too blinded by hurt and grief to think or look harder. and then he’s just livid. he can’t believe that tony would do this without talking to steve about whatever problems he thinks they may be having in their relationship.
steve takes the papers downs to tony’s workshop and confronts him. “how could you?!” he asks. “if you thought we were having problems you could have come to me. we could have talked about it. but you’d rather just throw it all away instead of trying to figure things out??”
and tony’s like, “steve, what are you talking about?”
steve shoves the papers at tony and says, “i found the divorce papers, tony. i’m not signing them until you tell me why you’re doing this.”
tony just stares at steve for a bit. and then, as if he wanted to make steve even angrier, tony just laughs. he laughs so hard he bends over and tears start streaming out his eyes.
“what the fuck, tony. do you think this is funny? stop laughing and explain yourself.”
tony finally gets himself together and he’s still giggling a little bit, but finally he says, “steve, honey. we’re not married.”
and suddenly steve’s mind just blanks out. oh god. he made a fool out of himself. he and tony have been so comfortable with each other, so domestic, they were practically married already, and steve forgot they weren’t actually married.
he’s so embarrassed, he wants to crawl into a hole and die right there.
“oh my god. i’m so sorry, tony. we’ve been doing so well. we’ve been so comfortable together, it honestly felt like we’ve been married for years.”
“i know, baby.”
“can you forgive me?”
“there’s nothing to forgive.”
then steve remembers. “wait, then why do you have divorce papers with your name on them?”
he looks at the papers again, then actually reads the rest of the document.
“james rhodes? you and rhodey are married?!”
tony nods. “um, yeah, so when we were in our 20s rhodey and i got drunk and married in vegas but we never bothered to get it annulled?”
“but you’re doing it now?”
“well, yes,” tony says. “i need to get a divorce, because i was planning on proposing to you.”
“oh.”
“so what do you say? will you marry me?”
steve beams. “god, yes, of course i’ll marry you. let’s get you divorced.”
hey so when andrew graduates, bee adopts him
- it’s something she’s been thinking about for at least the duration of his last year at psu
- andrew doesn’t bother walking at the commencement ceremony, but he goes to see his family walk (he stole one of aaron’s free tickets to the event so he didn’t have to ask)
- bee goes as well, and afterwards has a moment with him while the crowds are milling about outside the stadium where graduation was held
- she gives him a graduation present– the mug that had become the usual one he used for hot chocolate during their therapy sessions– and also holds out a legal envelope
- before she lets him take it, she explains. “I thought I’d save this for a special day. A fitting day, because you are officially no longer my patient. I know we have talked about what it means to care for someone, and how choosing to do so is often more powerful than the obligations brought about through blood relations. You’ve asked me what you are to me, and I told you are important. I told you I care about you, and that that would extend beyond your time here at school. If that is how you would like to keep our relationship, I respect that absolutely. But I decided I must at least ask what you think, because this is something I very much want.”
- and by this point andrew does not know where this is going beyond the twinge of apprehension he gets whenever he’s confronted with what he means to people, like the next sentence is either going to contain rejection or worse– the opposite, which makes him fear future rejection. but this is bee, and bee is safe, and the time they had the conversation where andrew asked what he is to her was the first time andrew felt that too-good-painful feeling and did not get the urge to shut it down.
- and he doesn’t exactly shut down in the way where he tugs up his apathy like a blanket all the way up his throat when bee says the next part, but he does kind of short circuit. “Andrew, would you consider allowing me to adopt you?”
A promt here! So maybe it’s a bit long but maybe?? So, Tony from the MCU (after infonity war or cw:ca) gets sent to annalternate dimension where nothing ”that bad” happened to the avengers. They are all still together and are like a big family. Now, I just want them to take care of Tony from the MCU and make him feel loved! I would love a lot of angst, AND a lot of hurt&comfort in it! .. good luck on your homework! ☺️🔆
Ok, I had Tony fall into the Avengers Assemble universe. Granted I haven’t seen this show in AGES but they were all so fuckin wholesome. Anyways so that’s the set up (minus them being cartoons, just imagine them as their live action counterparts obvi). And, for Maximum Angst, Steve and Tony in the AA cartoon are together. Also this is after Civil War, Tony’s invention to escape Siberia goes wrong and now he’s in another universe. Also be prepared for a Long Boi because I can’t seem to do short.
**
Tony blinks himself awake and Steve is standing over him looking concerned. “Tony?” he asks softly, a little unsure.
It takes a moment for the memories to come back to him, hazy in the mist of what he’s sure is a head injury to add to the rest of his problems. “Fuck off,” he snaps, curling onto his side so he can push himself up in a way that mostly doesn’t aggravate his ribs. It doesn’t work whatsoever and he lets out an annoyed, pained noise in response.
“Tony, you’re clearly hurt and-” Steve starts and Tony whips his head around to glare at him.
“And who’s fault is that?” he snaps. Steve looks utterly bewildered and that’s when Tony notices the differences. His hair is a little longer, a shade or two darker, and the uniform he’s wearing is a hell of a lot brighter. Like Coulson’s early designs of Steve’s suit, not his more modernized designs. Its looks fucking awful.
“I… don’t know,” Steve says in response to his question he should know the answer to considering it was him that crushed Tony’s chest. The reactor was fucked, no hope in saving that, and a good portion of his suit was out even if he managed to fix it into something new. Though he’s starting to wonder what his invention did because Steve isn’t the only thing that’s different. “Where’e the bunker?” he asks. “Did you like… come get me? Because, and I want this to be perfectly clear, I fucking hate you.”
Steve reals back like he’s been slapped, “I… Tony, what happened?” he asks, sounding at a loss. He looks devastated too, like it was Tony who hurt him and that pisses him off even if he’s somewhere new. He thinks. Maybe. Or those injuries have finally made him crack, who the hell knows?
They stare at each other for a long moment before a chime goes off that Tony recognizes as Steve’s ring tone. He watches Steve consider not answering it but he does eventually, frowning when he sees the caller ID.
*
Tony doesn’t know what the fuck a scrull is but he does know he’s not one. Okay he’s gathered that a scrull is some kind of alien but that’s it, and he’s still not one of those. Steve and, he swears to god, another version of himself stand in front of him. It hadn’t been all that difficult to capture an injured man and Tony is pissed off about it.
“Scrulls change back when injured,” Other Him point out.
“Not a scrull,” Tony supplies for the millionth time.
“Maybe he’s not injured enough,” Steve says.
“Pretty sure you cracked multiple ribs, asshole,” Tony says.
Other Tony frowns and its so weird how much they look alike. Sure, they’re the same person technically but Steve is the same person too and he isn’t identical to the Steve of Tony’s world. His version of himself is a much closer match, but this one is taller. Fuck him, Tony wanted the extra inches. He’s almost as tall as Steve.
“Steve cracked your ribs?” Other Tony asks and Tony rolls his eyes.
“Am I speaking Japanese or something? Yeah, that’s what I said,” he snaps.
Other Him grins in a way that is way too familiar and also creepy. “I speak Japanese so if you were I’d still know what you were saying,” he says.
Tony tells himself to fuck off in Dutch and it looks like this version of himself didn’t try to impress that Dutch girl by learning her language because he looks confused. Maybe she was Japanese in this universe or something.
“How and why would I ever do something like that?” Steve asks, obviously having a hard time believing that.
Well, that makes one of them. “Your parents die in a car crash?” he asks the other version of himself. He frowns but nods. “It wasn’t an accident, the Winter Soldier killed them assuming the events played out the same here. Steve here found out about it, lied to my face for two years, and then our Villain Of The Week found the footage of Bucky Barnes- that’s who the Winter Soldier is by the way and why Steve kept his cakehole shut despite riding my ass about secrets- and showed me. I didn’t react well,” he says.
“And I hurt you for that?” Steve asks and Tony frowns.
“Is Bucky not dead here?” he asks.
“Yes Bucky is dead- maybe not I suppose- here. I don’t understand why- its not that I didn’t care about the kid, I felt horrible when he died, he was my responsibility but I don’t know why my own lies would drive me to hurt you. You were the victim,” he says, confused by his counter part’s actions. Other Him looks pretty confused too. “And why would I ever lie about something like that? That’s horrible, it doesn’t sound like me at all.”
Other Him must agree because Tony watches something occur to himself. Likely, if he knows himself well, that Tony may very well be lying about who he is and where he comes from since the way he’s described Steve is so out of character. “When’s Steve’s birthday?” he asks and Tony frowns.
“That’s a stupid verification question, its the fourth of July. Literally everyone and their dog knows that Steve shares his birthday with America, it makes him more patriotic that way,” he says, rolling his eyes.
Steve, ever the strategist, catches on to what Other Tony is attempting to do. “Who were my parents? I know the comics didn’t get it right,” he says.
Didn’t in Tony’s universe either, not that he ever needed to read them. Or had an interest. “Text books don’t get it right either. Your parents were Joseph and Sarah Rogers, they were Irish immigrants that settled in Brooklyn. Unsurprisingly you gravitated to the queer section of the neighborhood considering you’re bisexual with a slight preference for me. I’m ninety percent sure you and Bucky were fucking,” he says, throwing as many details as he can remember off the top of his head in.
Something he says has both himself and Steve recoiling in disgust. “Other you is fucking disgusting, no offense,” Other Tony says to Steve, who looks quite like he agrees.
“What the hell kind of universe did you come from?” he asks.
Other Him frowns, “wait, he got all that right?” he asks.
“Minus Bucky, yes. Was I HYDRA?” he asks basically out of the blue and Tony frowns.
“Hell no, you hated those assholes so much you decided any and all regulation was obviously HYDRA and decided you didn’t need any. Regulation,” he clarifies.
Steve and Other Tony share a look. “That’s not what he decided here. That was my stance… sort of…” Other Tony says.
Tony rolls his eyes, “idiot,” he mumbles back. Sure he plays fast and loose with rules, always has, but they have their place. So does breaking them. But having them isn’t always a bad thing.
“I seriously had… Bucky and I… that… happened?” Steve asks, looking especially disgusted and Tony has zero idea why.
“Pretty sure, yeah. Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks.
Steve and Other Tony exchange another look. “To be clear,” Other Him says, “Steve slept with a thirteen year old boy?”
“Fourteen,” Steve corrects and Other Him wrinkles his nose.
“Are we going to fight semantics?” he asks and Steve sighs.
“Good point, but- what… I don’t… what kind of person am I in your universe?” he asks, at a loss but Tony is too.
“What the hell do you mean fourteen? Bucky isn’t a kid,” he says.
Steve and Other Him share another look and that is really getting on Tony’s nerves. “He is in this universe,” Steve says. “He’s not in yours?”
Tony shakes his head, “he’s your age, a little younger I think, but born in the same year. Guess you were just with Peggy in the war, then,” he says and Steve frowns again.
“Peggy is a lesbian, we were only together to hide that fact. Must have been difficult for her when I went into the ice,” he murmurs, looking, for the first time since Tony has met him, nostalgic. Its a look his Steve basically wears like a uniform but on this Steve the feeling passes fast when Other Him places his hand on Steve’s arm. He looks up and Tony knows that look, knows the look on Steve’s face too and holy shit.
“Are you two… together?” he asks, floored by the idea that this could ever happen in any universe.
Other Him nods slowly after a few moments. “I suppose it’s safe to say you and your Steve aren’t together, then?” he asks.
Tony lets out a loud snort, “I’d rather marry into HYDRA.”
*
He and Tony, his Tony, have joked about it plenty of times, that they’d be married in every universe but that isn’t at all true. Its not information Steve wanted all things considered, the person he is in the other Tony’s universe is someone he finds revolting. So its strange, he supposes, to see the other Tony defend him.
“Look, you went through some shit ok?” he says despite having claimed to hate Steve, his Steve, when they first met. His Tony stands off to the side, entirely unconvinced of the other Tony’s defense.
“We’ve established that most of the big things are the same- I still lost Bucky and went into the ice. That’s no reason to end up how I did. How could I let me get like that?” he asks, shocked at his own behavior. But its not really his behavior, he supposes.
“The big things happened, but in totally different ways,” other Tony says. “He became Iron Man at seventeen? That’s nuts. Didn’t happen for me until I was thirty five. And scrulls? Not a thing where I am, we had an invasion of other aliens in New York. Fucked me up pretty bad, I have PTSD bad enough that no one listens when I tell them that aliens are coming back. And they are, its not the PTSD talking,” he says, quick to defend himself in a way his Tony doesn’t do.
This Tony is on the defensive all the time, eyes darting around suspiciously like he’s prepared for an attack at any moment. Steve hasn’t seen people do that since war. Even Natasha, who is more paranoid than most, doesn’t act this squirrely. “Aliens are reoccurring here too,” Steve tells him gently and Tony relaxes some. Steve suspects he’s relieved that someone has believed him and if this were his Tony he’d hug him. But he suspects this one would not react well to the touch. “And I still don’t think that anything that happened to the other me is a justification for my actions,” he says honestly, softly.
The other Tony doesn’t respond right away. “Look, I don’t know how the Avengers became a thing here, but in my world you don’t adjust well. Or at all. You keep your distance, long for the past you lost, miss the people you’ll never see again. Then fucking Bucky came back and you got obsessed with that, probably because you wanted some kind of connection to what you lost, I don’t know. Point is that was a thing, and finding out it was a thing involved finding out a bunch of high level officials worldwide were HYDRA- it was a mess. SHIELD fell, the Accords happened, you and Bucky almost killed me after I almost killed him. You dropped your shield, I mean the whole fucking mantle, when I told you you didn’t deserve it. I might hate Howard’s guts but he did make it and you were friends with the guy. Seemed pretty shitty to me that you’d disrespect his memory like that, keeping his murder from his kid because you were sad about your fuck buddy from war being back,” he says, taking a bitter turn towards the end that indicates another layer of feeling to his words.
So he doesn’t forgive the other Steve, he supposes, even as he defends him. But Steve still doesn’t understand how things could have gotten to that point, even with a change in Bucky’s age and maybe their relationship. There’s nothing in this world that would be able to make him understand that- in this universe Bucky was far more his son than his lover, obviously considering his age. He can at least thank god that Bucky hadn’t been a child in Tony’s universe too. That would have made his actions more disgusting than despicable.
“‘Spending all your time missing what you had means you miss out on what you can build in the future’,” he says. “You told me that. Its how I… got past things, I guess. Missing what I had is no excuse to ignore what I have here.” Had Tony not told his version of Steve that?
He guesses no because Tony looks confused. “I never told you that, not to my Steve anyways. I told you everything special about you came from a bottle and you told me I was selfish and unworthy of being called a hero. We hated each other from day one. I mean I thought we got past that but then it turned out that you lied to me for years about my parents’ deaths so I guess not,” he mumbles.
“You hated dad?” Tony, his Tony, asks and other Tony frowns.
“Yeah, guy was a fucking piece of shit. Mom did her best, but…” he shakes his head, looking away. Maybe he hates Howard, but Steve can tell the loss still hurts bone deep. He knows that kind of loss, apparently his counterpart knows it better, and he still chose to hide information about that loss from his Tony? Steve can’t wrap his head around it.
“What did he do to you?” his Tony asks, confused. “Did you have Jarvis?”
Other Tony smiles fondly, looking nostalgic for the first time since Steve has met him but it passes fast. “Yeah, we had Jarvis. He did his best too, but Howard still got mean when he got drunk.”
His Tony frowns, “dad quit drinking before I was born. Said it made him do things he wasn’t proud of,” he says softly. “What about Obadiah?” he asks and Steve winces for him, knowing the man was a sore spot for his Tony.
Other Tony looks irritated more than anything though. “Turns out he was selling weapons to terrorists. Tried to get a few to kill me too, its how I made the arc reactor. There was shrapnel in my chest from one of my own weapons. Poetic justice, that,” he murmurs softly. He looks ashamed of this but Steve is sure he’s missing something given that what he described was another story in which he suffered a great loss.
His Tony must pick out a different detail though because he frowns. “What do you mean you had shrapnel in your chest so you built the reactor? How are those even related?” he asks.
Other Tony looks confused. “I… used it as a power source to keep the shrapnel from tearing at my heart. It was implanted in my chest,” he says, confusion leaking into his tone.
His Tony looks horrified. “Jesus, I was fucking around in an MIT lab when I figured out the math and then came the suit mostly because Rhodey and I made a bet and- how the hell did you get that thing in your chest?” he asks.
“Surgery. Not sure how it went totally, but Yinsen- the guy that operated on me- did a pretty good job all things considered. I probably wasn’t cooperative,” he says.
Steve’s eyebrows draw together, “not cooperative? You were unconscious,” he says, hoping to prove his own theory wrong.
He doesn’t. “I passed out several times but I wasn’t unconscious,” he says and Steve can feel the bile rising in the back of his throat. Tony, his Tony, has a similar reaction.
*
They don’t know what to do and Other Tony had been barely conscious and functioning when he made the invention that got him here. Tony doesn’t know what to do about that, has no idea how to react to his own damn sob story either. The universe his counterpart is from sounds awful- Steve is a shell of himself, and Tony thinks the Other Tony is also a shell of him. God, if that’s what a universe where he and Steve don’t get along looks like he wants nothing to do with it…
“Hey,” Steve murmurs, sneaking up behind Tony and wrapping his arms around his waist. He leans back into it, grateful for the steadying touch it looks like his counterpart really needs.
“We should call Rhodey. He always knows what to do,” he says for lack of anything better.
Steve sighs softly, knowing that if he wants to call Rhodey things have really gone wrong. Most of the time he deals with things on his own or with Steve.
*
Tony finds it to be a relief that at least Rhodey is the same, mostly, as his Rhodey. Thor has lighter hair though and its weird. “I’m sure I can figure out how you landed here and send you home,” Thor tells him. Rhodey nods too but Tony lacks faith. Thor, who seems to be a shred more emotionally competent than Tony’s Thor, recognizes this.
“What am I like in your universe?” he asks and Tony sighs.
“Alright I guess, you love Loki way too much, you still do that old speech pattern thing, you’re a little less playful, I don’t know, its been years. Last time we talked you nearly choked me out,” he says, remembering Thor lifting him off the ground by his neck. Granted he gets why Thor was pissed off, but its not like Bruce got strangled. Technically they both ran the tests and neither of them should have gotten strangled. Bruce probably should have gotten therapy though.
Thor looks alarmed at this but Rhodey speaks before he does. “What the hell? Where was I?” he asks.
“Standing three feet away?” he says, voice going up a little at the end because that’s not relevant to this Rhodey.
“What!” Other Rhodey yells. “Where am I right now? I need to go kick my own ass,” he says, ready to fight in a way that makes Tony laugh.
“Relax, I think the mind stone was messing with us all. None of us were acting the way we normally do,” he says. It had been like everyone’s worst traits were amplified. Bruce’s intristic desire to learn more and maybe press science in ways its not ready to be pressed in yet, Tony’s fear, desire to help people, and scientific curiosity gone wrong, Natasha’s being overly suspicious, Steve’s cool aloofness and general being a sanctimonious prick, Thor’s first instincts to jump to a physical confrontation, Clint. None of them had been acting quite right and Tony thinks it was residual effects from the stone. He supposes for Rhodey it had been his tendency to sometimes be complacent in situations he shouldn’t be that had been amplified.
No one in the room buys this though. “That’s no reason to harm a teammate,” Thor says, frowning.
“I’m still ready to kick my own ass,” Rhodey says. “That would never happen here.”
Tony gets the feelings that a lot of things wouldn’t happen here. “In other you’s defense I did accidentally create a murder bot that wanted to end the world,” he says to Thor. That’s pretty relevant but Thor still looks confused.
“Than I should have strangled the bot,” he says like the solution was that easy.
*
Steve watches the two Tonys work and its funny to see them try and one up what are essentially their own ideas. Both of them constructed their suits differently and now they’re both pointing out all the problems in the other’s designs and trying to solve them. Its cute to watch, Tony versus himself.
“You have to send him back,” Natasha tells him softly.
He looks down at her and wonders how she changed in the other Tony’s universe. “Has he told you about that universe. We’re all awful, especially to him,” he says.
Natasha purses her lips and Steve knows exactly what’s coming next because its Natasha. “He probably isn’t perfect himself,” she says but Steve has never gotten the impression that he was. He’s casually mentioned a bunch of things he thinks he’s done wrong. He owned up to his rude comment to the other Steve when they first met, defended the other Thor strangling him due to his accidental murder bot, shown a great shame for his involvement in weapons dealing, and defended the other Steve’s behavior several times despite claiming to hate him in the same breath. His involvement in mistakes is not something Tony seems to lack clarity in.
“Has he told you about who you are in his universe?” he asks and she looks a little guilty. Then she’s done something too, he guesses.
“I don’t have the full context for my actions, just what he’s told me,” she says rationally. Steve isn’t entirely sure they need the full context for some of these things. There is no reason to hide how a person’s parents died from them- got murdered actually and Tony had mentioned a search for Bucky. If the Avengers there runs like they do here Tony funded that search. Other him forced Tony, unknowingly, to fund the search for his own parent’s murderer for only his own benefit. No amount of context makes that okay. The same goes for Thor strangling Tony and Rhodey doing nothing about it. Tony blames the stone but he isn’t sure that’s the problem.
There are plenty of other things, like the Accords, that he’s sure would make sense in proper context. Politics is always nuanced. But strangling people and lying to them is wrong no matter which way you slice it and Tony is so used to this treatment he defends it. That doesn’t make Steve feel particularly warm and fuzzy about sending him back.
“Natasha, you’re not a stupid woman. I’m sure he’s told you at least one thing that has made you raise an eyebrow at your other self’s actions,” he says.
She sighs and looks away. “I… he told me about this incident I had with T’Challa. I don’t agree with what I did there, and right after his father’s death…” she shakes her head. “And I called him a narcissist. Its not really a moral incorrectness, but anyone with a half a bran cell can tell he’s not a narcissist. He has his moments, probably more so in the right universe, but that’s a wildly inaccurate statement. I don’t know how I would ever be able to come to that conclusion,” she says.
They go back to watching Tony work with himself and Steve realizes that he should have been able to tell them apart instantly. The other Tony is much shorter and he wonders how and why that happened. But then he mentioned abuse, so maybe that had something to do with it. He doesn’t want to think about it if he’s honest because it makes him physically sick to do so.
Instead he watches the Tonys try to out do each other only to get annoyed with the way the other keeps the lab. As it turns out his Tony is much more stringent on where he keeps his tools- which isn’t a trait that’s native to him either. Steve smiles, pleased to know his organization has rubbed off on Tony a little while the other Tony gets irritated at his disorganizes mess being disrupted. The end result is them both tearing apart an Iron Man suit while deciding which parts of the design need to change based on how the other fixed various problems.
“I’ve got this new idea for a suit. Its nanotech,” the other Tony says after they decide the project is mostly a lost cause due to blending the designs leading to more problems than its solving and Steve’s Tony’s eyes light up.
“Show me!”
*
He knows Steve means nothing by it, he does. But its… he’s not sure how to describe it. Hurtful, he guesses, to watch how Steve gravitates towards his other self. He knows that the other Tony needs Steve’s support more than he does, but it still stings to watch their soft interactions, note how they get along almost as well as he and Steve do. Its hard not to consider what would have happened if the other Tony had been in this universe and he’d been in the other Tony’s. God knows he doesn’t want any of that, especially the part where Steve isn’t anything like himself.
His counterpart is more perceptive than he is though because he notices Tony’s discomfort in a way he knows he wouldn’t have noticed if it was the other Tony who was uncomfortable. “I’m not you,” he says and Tony frowns.
“I know that. I’m you, but taller,” he says, poking fun at a sore spot with the other Tony.
The other Tony flips him off casually but laughs. “Eat it, Stark. Seriously though, I’m not you, and I’ll never be anything like you. You shouldn’t be jealous. Also being jealous of yourself is ridiculous,” he adds.
Yeah, its not something he doesn’t know. “But he likes you, he’s basically pulled towards you like a gravitational force,” he says, thinking of how protective Steve has gotten over the other version of himself.
Tony shakes his head, “he’s not protective of me, he’s protective of you. I’m nothing more than the person you could have been to him, and I’m not saying that as a disparaging thing its just the truth, and he doesn’t want to see what happened to me happen to you. And he has some misplaced guilt over the other version of himself. He’s attached to me out of love for you,” he murmurs.
He wonders if maybe this Tony just doesn’t understand how much Steve will care about pretty much anyone regardless of personal connection. But then he remembers how selfish his version of Steve is and decides not to say anything. His Steve wouldn’t drop his shield for anything, not even him, because he knows he helps people and at his core he could never give up that piece of himself. He doesn’t understand the other Tony’s Steve any more than his Steve does.
*
When he finally manages to figure out how to get home he has to hold Rhodey back from kicking himself in the ass, Steve back from talking to himself in what he claims will be a stern way, and the other Tony back from pestering the shit out of Shuri and Peter. Turns out he has a thing for kids here too, but it’d been more latent a trait. The good news is that his version of Steve clearly has an interest in kids too.
The plus side to this visit is that he learns that this universe’s Pepper married Happy and never got with him so he has a plan once he gets back home to set them up. She’s happy here, and she deserves happiness at home too so he’ll try and get that for her. And really, no one will be more dedicated to her than Happy. The man is like a dog with a bone when it comes to the people he loves, Tony knows because Happy has always gone above and beyond for him.
And he’ll get his bed back. He misses his bed and the Tony here is a freak who prefers a hard bed to a soft bed. He’s excited to get home and sink into his mattress before calling Rhodey to tell him he’s not dead. Despite this universe’s Rhodey’s worries he knows Rhodey will always have his back and he’s definitely worried so he should get home to him soon.
*
Rhodey is tutting around behind him, asking a million questions while Tony sinks into the foam on his mattress. “This is the greatest moment of my life,” he mumbles and Rhodey makes an annoyed noise.
“Tony, get your ass out of that bed and explain to me how this happened and why Pepper is on a date with Happy. What kind of messed up world would put Happy and Pepper together?” he asks.
He grins as he flips over, “the other universe. Also, also. You were married to Hope van Dyne,” he says excitedly. He watches Rhodey feel about fifty different emotions before he settles on shocked.
“I slept with the enemy?” he finally squeezes out.
“Actually Hank and Howard didn’t have a rivalry there because Howard never had a drinking problem and was apparently a very loving father. Hence you and Hope being married. Sure as hell beats out her current Cruise Ling or whatever the hell his name is,” he says.
Rhodey squints, “you mean Scott Lang? Whatever, doesn’t matter. Sorry about Howard,” he says softly.
Tony shrugs, “I was the one who ended up telling them that Bucky was maybe alive and that he could have killed the other me’s parents. The situations were basically identical so its possible that Bucky still killed them.” Other him had reacted much better to the news partially, he suspects, because when he first got it he hadn’t been sure if Tony was lying. Then when he looked into it it’d been obvious he grieved better than Tony had. And he also has the Avengers around for support so there’s that. They’re currently trying to see if there are any traces of Bucky throughout history with Tony’s knowledge of what his MO was here.
“Still. So, what I like?” he asks, bright and happy. Tony doesn’t tell him he wanted to kick his own ass and instead tells him about all the accomplishments he’d made in the other universe. He’d been a CEO there of a tech company- his, Hope’s, and Tony’s companies basically had a monopoly of technology across basically every board so that was cool. And they all did a lot of charity work so that had been nice to know too.
Rhodey had been enthused to learn that in another live he had a bunch of really cool labs.
Give me a Leverage Sense8 AU or give me death.
It’s Eliot who notices it first, a flash of blonde hair out of the corner of his eye. He’s used to noticing the people around him. He’s used to keeping count of every person in his eyeline, no matter how many people are in the room.
And this blonde woman should not be there. She should not be there when he has to force his way into a safe, but there she is. All in black, legs crossed on the desk beside him, ponytail swishing. “God.” She rolls her eyes. “A blowtorch. How crude.”
He glances over to her, but like a mirage, once he’s focused, she’s gone.
Two days later, Eliot’s about to deck a security guard when another woman shows up. Brunette hair and a lovely accent. “She’s gay,” the woman says. “Seduction won’t work no matter how hard you try, so you’ll have to find a different thing you both have in common.”
Eliot looks down and sees the tiny pin on her blouse. A pink ribbon.
“There you go,” the woman says. All he has to do is tell her a story about a sick little sister, and he has her eating out of the palm of his hand. Then the woman is gone.
And then he shifts. It’s a quick blink. One moment he’s in standing on a street corner, and then next he’s in a chokehold. Instinct kicks in. He throws back an elbow and it meets flesh. One hit, two hit, three hits later, and there are two bodies on the floor.
Eliot shifts. In the center of the circle, panting heavily, stands a tall black man. “What the hell–”
But then Eliot is gone again.
“It’s a sophisticated scheme,” the man with the bottle of Jack tells him. Eliot has already knocked two men two the ground, but there are more coming, and the fight isn’t over yet.
“You get someone’s credit information and start opening credit cards in their name. Then, you catfish some poor idiot and say you’re adding them to your credit card account. You get the idiot to buy you things for you on your card. Everything’s good until the credit card company gets wind of the fraud and shuts everything down, but by then you’ve cleaned everything up and moved on to greener pastures.”
“Dude,” Eliot growls, “I’m just here to get a necklace back.”
The man shrugs. “Was it insured?”
Eliot finishes slamming a goon’s head into the nearest table. “What does that matter?”
The man shrugs, and then he’s gone.
Parker doesn’t even really bat an eye. She kinda actually likes her new friends. Sure, the smelly guy with the weird hair is a bit odd, but he’s helpful in his own way. He can see the big pieces when she’s too distracted with the shiny things. He’s the one who figures out a fence is going to betray her long before she would have.
Then there’s the one who calls her “girl” all the time. He drags the word out too, like it’s prettier than one of the glittery diamonds she nicks. She likes him. She likes how he smiles at her, how he lingers in her presence a little longer even after he’s helped her figure out the code for a 15 digit lock.
The punchy guy, well, he took a little more time to warm up to. She’s not really a fan of fist fights. She’d rather hide. But when a security guard finds her and she can see the guy pulling his hair back into a ponytail, she smiles a little.
“Go for the eyes,” he tells her, holding up two bent fingers and pushing them forward in the air. She does, and it’s kind of satisfying.
“Oh dear,” the lady says to her every time she shows up. “No no no you mustn’t…” and then she goes on to tell Parker exactly how she’s not talking right. Parker kind of appreciates that. She’s not so great with the words thing. People are hard. Locks are easy.
Except these four people. They haven’t been hard. They’ve been like locks with easy combinations. Parker feels like she kind of knows them. Like the locks she picks again and again. She knows how all their inner workings are.
And that’s really nice.
Okay so the blonde is gorgeous. The blonde is gorgeous and the British lady is really good at talking her way out of problems. Hardison isn’t really sure what the point is with the dude who shows up to yammer on and on about cons and how Hardison might get himself caught if he does one thing or another. But even when he’s very clearly drunk, he’s still been helpful a few times.
So has the gun who is always hitting people. He’s gotten Hardison out of more than one scrape because Hardison has never done guns, will never do guns, and really really really doesn’t like being in the same room with people who want to hurt him.
And yeah, his knuckles really really hurt—his whole body hurts, actually— after the fighter helps him out of a few bad situations, but it’s better that than losing a pinkie. Or a toe.
So yeah, Hardison is okay with the people in his head.
Nate needs another fucking drink.
Sophie comes to see them all sort of like children. One is angry, one is hurting, one is lost, and one is alone. She’s the one who realizes they need to be brought together. She’s the one who realizes they are the solution to all of their problems. She is the one who sits beside a drunken Nate and helps him set out asprin and water for the morning. She is the one who sits quietly with a silent Parker as she picks lock after lock and studies countless blueprints.
She is the one who stands in an empty, threadbare apartment with Eliot when he cooks himself an extravagant dinner only he will eat.
She is the one who sees the late nights where Harrison binges on bad TV and orange soda.
She is the one who realizes that these people, whose pain she feels as if it is her own, all need each other.
Like she, when she’s tired of her fake names and her Rolodex of personalities, just needs them.
Living with her loneliness, her isolation, is like suffering under a terrible weight.
They provide her with leverage.
I don’t understand why High School Musical 4 is going to get an entire new cast when all they had to do was set it at Chad and Ryan’s wedding
Sharpay – mellowed out some with age, still struggling to make it big, chronically single – insists she’s happy for Ryan but quickly devolves into her obligatory show-stopper about how she’s sick of waiting to meet someone who’s right for her. (Mostly the song entails Sharpay singing her ridiculously long laundry list of requirements while trying on bedazzled wedding dresses.)
There’s a running gag that Troy is supersupersuper late for the wedding. We may or may not ever actually see him, since Zac Efron didn’t even come to the damn ten year reunion and is apparently a huge party pooper. What we do see is Gabriella on the phone with him every fifteen minutes or so, urging him to hurry up. Eventually she decides that he’s obviously stuck in traffic because he doesn’t care about their friends enough and wonders if she should break up with him. Cue the obligatory once-a-movie Gabriella Is Sad song.
Taylor and Chad are SUPER amicable exes and she’s organizing the entire wedding with an iron fist. Chad and Ryan didn’t have to do anything. Kelsey is on piano. Zeke is baking their cake, obvs.
Troy is SUPPOSED TO BE Chad’s best man, but again, he’s supersupersuper late. At one point while Gabriella’s on the phone with him, Chad runs up behind her and yells “DUDE. GETCHA HEAD IN THE GAME” into the phone.
Sharpay elbows someone in the face to catch the bouquet when it gets thrown. Like, violently. It’s played for laughs, of course, but we all know that Kelsey/Jason/whoever should probably be in the hospital.
Assuming they can lock down Zefron, the movie will inevitably end up being about them. Troy proposed during the damn reception. Gabriella cries. Taylor and Kelsey are screaming. Sharpay is immediately trying to become Gabriella’s best friend and call dibs on being her maid of honor. Ryan looks affronted at this hijacking but nobody notices.
tHE FUCKING WEDDING COLORS ARE WHITE AND RED JUST SO CHAD CAN SCREAM “WILDCATS” AS SOON AS HE’S DONE BEING PRONOUNCED RYAN’S LAWFULLY WEDDED HUSBAND
Sharpay and Zeke reconnect after that moment at the of HSM1 where they were a thing for like 10 seconds. Sharpay Learns a Valuable Lesson about how maybe you don’t need a guy who’s perfectly perfect in every way when you’ve got once who’s a total sweetheart and can bake like a mofo.
Ryan brings some girl he knows from Broadway who’s like his best dancer or something. She spends the entire wedding flirting with Kelsey and making her all flustered. Everyone is trying to get them together.
It ends with an elaborate musical number at the reception. Possibly there’s a self-aware joke about how Ryan emailed everyone the choreography for it months ago, so they all better know it by now. It probably turns into a reprise of We’re All In This Together and then I cry into my popcorn for 6 hours
~the end~
HOW DOES THIS HAVE SO MANY NOTES ARE Y’ALL SERIOUS
holy shit can this happen instead
Chad needs to smash faces with Ryan right after screaming WILDCATS and then they need to leave, come back, and their clothing is swapped!!!!!
I’m just surprised y’all can remember all of their names
bold of you to assume I’d forget any part of something as iconic as high school musical
wow, i can’t believe we’ve all just watched the entirety of HSM4 on tumblr for free and no other version of this movie has/will/or ever exists
ok, but what if peter finds all those children’s drawings tony keeps and finds the one he sent to iron man after being saved by him at stark expo and tells tony he’s the one who drew that
tony would be weeping like a baby
Oh look my hand slipped“Hey, this is mine!”
Tony looked up from where he was moving boxes around. The lab was getting a bit crowded with him, Bruce, Vision, and the bots in there already, and with Peter joining them more often, accidental bumping was becoming a more common occurrence. So, Tony had decided to clean out the back storage space of the lab so he could expand it, that way everyone would have their own little corner. However, that involved cleaning. Which meant going through a bunch of boxes and deciding what to keep and what to move into storage.
Peter was sitting hunched over a box he’d just opened, holding and slightly crinkled piece of paper in his hands.
“What are you talking about, kiddo?” Tony asked, dropping the box on top of the stack next to him.
Peter got up from his own box and brought the paper over to Tony, shoving it in his face.
“That box had a bunch of kids drawings and stuff and Iron Man stuff, so I wanted to see what all was in it,” Peter said, smiling at the paper in Tony’s hands, “and I found my drawing!”
Tony looked down at the drawing in his hands.
On it, a little boy in Iron Man armor was fighting off a bigger, clunkier suit of armor, standing next to a taller, more adult looking Iron Man armor. They stood side by side with their hands out, shooting repulsors at the cluncky armor. A speech bubble popped out of Tony’s armor, saying “Nice job, kid!”
Tony recognized the drawing. It had been one of his favorites. He’d gotten it not long after the Stark Expo incident of 2010, and it had really helped him feel better after the whole “Tony Stark, not recommended” fiasco. If he remembered correctly, the picture came with a letter from some kid, telling him that they were excited they got to see him at the Expo, even if “Mr. Hammer” had ruined it for everyone in the end. The letter was probably over in that box where Peter had found the picture.
“This was yours?” Tony asked, a weird, warm feeling spreading through his chest. His throat feels weirdly tight, and he’s sure it’s probably just dust or something kicked up from moving boxes that’s making his eyes water, too.
“Yeah!” Peter nodded enthusiastically, “look at the back.”
And sure enough, there on the back, printed in somewhat jagged child crayon block letters, was the signature P. Parker.
“I remember drawing it and sending it to you after you saved me at the Expo that year.”
Ice suddenly floods Tony’s veins as he flips the picture back over. The memory of a kid, a stupid, stupidly brave kid standing up to a Hammer drone with nothing but a plastic Iron Man mask and a fabric glove with LED repulsors built in. If JARVIS hasn’t called the boy to his attention as he flew by, that kid would’ve been—
“That was you?!” Tony practically shouts, his head swinging back up to look at Peter with wild eyes.
Peter doesn’t seem to notice Tony’s freak out in front of him, his eyes still dancing over the picture.
“That was the coolest day of my life, honestly. I couldn’t believe I actually got to see you in the armor. I don’t think Uncle Ben really believed me when I told him, now that I think about it, but he helped me send this to you to say than— Hey, Mr. Stark, are you okay? You look a little pale, do you need to— oomph!”
The breath is knocked out of him when Tony suddenly grabs onto Peter’s t-shirt and pulls him against his chest. His hands come up automatically to rest loosely on Tony’s back, the exact opposite to the way Tony’s hands are clenched in Peter’s shirt, his old drawing crinkling slightly in his clenched hand.
“Uhh.. Mr. Stark?” Peter says timidly, suddenly unsure of himself, “Are you okay?”
“Shut up, Pete,” Tony says into his shoulder. Peter’s eyes widen at how choked Tony sounds, and he almost thinks he feels wetness on his shoulder where Mr. Stark’s eyes are.
“Is this— is this a hug? Because if it’s not I don’t want to make it weird again—“
“Kid, just let it happen.”
Peter stands shocked for a minute before shrugging within the hug.
“Okay!” Peter says brightly. He brings his arms up to wrap tighter around Tony’s chest and he lets his head rest on Tony’s shoulders, a small smile pressing against Tony’s shirt.
Tony just clutches him tighter.
Stupid dust in my eyes, he thinks, ignoring the warmth he feels spread in his heart when Peter hugs him back.
Neil Josten wears a gold band around his left ring finger and is absolutely cheating on his partner.
Before he ever joined the Santa Fe Cougars, Josten was part of a pride campaign for Nike. So was Andrew Minyard. It was a big deal. The interviews around it said every athlete in the campaign was LGBTQ. Josten talked about his husband. Minyard talked about queer foster kids.
That, the Cougars speculate, is where Josten and Minyard reconnected. They went to college together, separated when Minyard moved to Santa Fe and Josten moved to Jersey, saw each other again at this campaign, and then, a year later, were on the same team again.
None of the Cougars have ever met Josten’s husband. Even at team parties, Josten never brings him around. Probably he thinks it would be too risky.
None of them have gotten close enough to Minyard to figure out his relationship status. But, the Cougars collectively believe, Minyard’s relationship status can only possibly make a bad situation worse.
Thanos does not realize that the Stones have a will of their own. It was subtle; they truly only wanted to be united, but they played the long game, the game that lasted lifetimes, generations, millennia. And then they found Tony, one by one. First Space. Then Mind. Then Time. And with those the others soon followed. For while Thanos could use them, he could never truly wield them. Not as Tony could, and would. After all, Tony Stark was always, will always, and shall always be theirs.
Ah well it’s an interesting story, the tale of Anthony Stark, the man some say used to be human but became a god or something like it somewhere along the way.
It starts when Tony’s young.
There’s something in Howard’s basement laboratory that calls to him.
It hums, just there on the edge of his senses, slipping into his dreams at night, into his every waking thought even though he’s too young to really understand what’s happening.
It’s only a matter of time really before Tony sneaks down stairs to find out what it is. Even at such a young age curiosity has always been his guiding sin.
There’s something sitting on one of Howard’s lab tables. It’s something Tony has never seen before, a cube of some sort that shines bright and brilliant and oh so blue.
He’s never seen anything so beautiful in all of his short life.
Tony spends hours down there while Jarvis is busy and Howard’s away or passed out drunk in his study.
Spends hours just … staring while the cube hums at him, a soft lovely sort of lullaby that makes him sway slightly where he’s sitting cross legged on the table beside it.
It reminds him, vaguely, of the rapidly fading memory of his Madre humming lightly to him in their secret language, the one she tells him not to let Howard, Sir, hear him speak.
Tony’s five and a half and he … he misses those times with an ache his little chest can barely contain. Misses the days when Madre would smile at him, when she didn’t smell like sherry and didn’t have a row of pill bottles on her vanity.
So the soft, curious sort of whispering that comes from The Cube as Tony calls it in his head, is a comfort of sorts.
So, eventually, lonely and heartsick, Tony starts to whisper back.
Hades & Persephone AU
(Prompt: Steve and Toni are Hades and Persephone reborn and their godhood wakes when they meet on the helicarrier but everyone believes Toni is Death and Steve is Life.)
(I’mma repost the beginning here as I add to make the reading flow smoother)
I of course go for the fucking angst because I’m That Bitch™.
So like what if yeah them meeting wakes their godhood but Steve …. Steve’s a bit reluctant.
Because hasn’t he lost enough? Hasn’t the world changed enough? Does this have to happen too? His very humanity ripped from him? Choices gone?
And Toni … god Toni just fucking buckles it down, bites back the agony of everyone immediately assuming she’s Death instead of Creation. The torture of Steve turning from her too, lips sealed shut tightly, never even trying to defend her, to correct anyone.
But Toni knows what she is, knows who she is, always has in one way or another. Only now it finally makes sense, finally feels right.
Because she is Persephone reborn, a goddess of creation, of life, of blossoming and growth.
But so many forget that her name wasn’t always Persephone. It was Kore once, little girl.
And then she chose the Underworld, chose Hades, and Zeus renamed her and so many have forgotten the true meaning of the name Persephone.
Chaos Bringer.
clintbbarton 