Chapters: 7/?
Fandom: Spider-Man (Comicverse), Spider-Man - All Media Types, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Harry Osborn & Peter Parker, Norman Osborn & Peter Parker, Harry Osborn & Norman Osborn & Peter Parker, Harry Osborn/Peter Parker, Norman Osborn/Peter Parker, Gwen Stacy/Mary Jane Watson
Characters: Norman Osborn, Peter Parker, Harry Osborn, Gwen Stacy (The Amazing Spider-Man), Mary Jane Watson, Flash Thompson, Green Goblin (Marvel)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Love Triangles, Complicated Relationships, Fluff and Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, When your evil dad is your romantic rival, Secret Relationship, Everyone Is Gay, Age Difference, Secret Identity, Friendship/Love, Obsessive Behavior, Sneaking Around, Secrets, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Jealous Harry Osborn, Peter Parker is a Mess, Older Man/Younger Man, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Lies
Summary:
In an Alternate timeline, Peter Parker is Spider-man and a Master's student at Empire State University. Harry Osborn is his best friend with a secret crush on Peter. Norman Osborn is the CEO of Oscorp and the Green Goblin.
Super Powers are complicated, but even worse is student loans and terrible debt. This leads Norman Osborn to become involved in Peter's life, where both are unaware of the other's secret identities.
Harry wants to tell Peter how he feels but is too nervous, but even if he did, Peter's already seeing someone else. How is Harry supposed to react when he finds out that someone is his (evil) father. Peter wants Harry to be happy, he loves his best friend, but he also likes being romantically pursued by Norman. Norman views life as a game to win, but how will he adapt when he is competing with his son?
A messy and chaotic tale of friendship, love, heroics, villainy and trying to find a balance in their lives.
Stony for 30 or 40? I LOVE U SO MUCH UR FICS GIVE ME LIFE 💛💛👏
AHHHH YAY LIFE!!! you and an anon both requested #30, so here’s some classic tony!angst and protective!steve :3 — I PROMISE THERE IS A VERY MUSHY, VERY HAPPY ENDING
#30: “You’re not worth it.” (TW: child abuse, references to alcoholism, Howard being a shitty human being [but what else is new])
***
It’s Wednesday, and Wednesday means movie night at the mansion. A time-honored tradition that goes all the way back to the Avengers’ inception, back when Steve was still finding his way out of the ice—literally and figuratively—and Iron Man and Tony Stark were two different people.
It’s been a long time since those early days, Tony thinks, watching the new team assemble on the couches, loveseats, beanbag chairs, and blankets strewn around the in-home movie theater. The screen isn’t excessively massive, per Steve’s wishes, but the sound is as good as it gets, per Clint’s; Tony updates the hardware year over year to keep up with the times, especially as film goes the way of digital (much to Steve’s chagrin).
But tonight is Steve’s pick for movie, and Tony wonders if it was planned that way the moment Luke Cage asks what they’re going to watch and Steve gets that glint in his eye. The one that Tony can recognize from a mile away now without even trying, the one that screams “Steve Rogers is a little shit” and that very few people seem to be able to hear.
Tony groans the moment Steve grins and says, “Home movies!” while revealing two armfuls of reels from behind his back, some of which are so dusty and small, Tony wonders if they’re Steve’s.
The team settles in with enough snacks to put a rhino in a coma while Tony and Steve head to the back of the room where the vintage projector Tony pulled out of storage for the occasion awaits.
“Next week, you can pick the movie,” Steve whispers conspiratorially, bumping Tony with a friendly elbow. Tony has to hold himself back from leaning into Steve in response, the way his body feels primed to do and has done for literal years, ever since—god, since always. But Tony knows his interest and affections are very much one-sided, and Tony doesn’t need to flagellate himself over it any more than he already does with everything else in his life. Plus, watching Steve with each of his girlfriends is more than taxing enough.
He’s had years of practice keeping his feelings for Steve from the man. He can handle an elbow and a wink. That shit’s practically child’s play.
“If footage from my sweet sixteen made it into this lineup, we’re watching all three Die Hards,” Tony replies with a saccharine smile that makes Steve blanch.
“Tony, no.”
“Tony, yes.”
“The last time we watched Die Hard, Clint wouldn’t stop talking with a fake German accent for a week.”
“I know! It was hilarious, and I want to get it on camera this time so I can send it to Alan Rickman. He’ll hate it.”
Tony giggles at Steve’s huff, which is really a laugh disguised as exasperation, another one of Steve’s tics Tony knows by heart. The pain and joy of knowing that secretly splits Tony right down the middle—the joy of knowing Steve is a much bigger troll than anyone realizes, the pain of wanting to grab him and kiss him for it—but he hides it all with an elbow to Steve’s ribs and a muttered “jerk” under his breath.
He’s spent the past ten years and change like this—halved by a love that makes him feel whole, which is an equation that shouldn’t work, but does, because Tony’s math is always right—so what’s one more night? In the grand scheme of things, not much, and every second of it is more than Tony could have ever hoped for.
Together in the darkest part of the room he and Steve work in tandem to load the first reel onto the projector and let it run: it’s early footage of the first Avengers team, recorded off of a news broadcast. Down in front, the rest of the team throws popcorn and jeers, laughing themselves hoarse at the costumes, the villains, the dialogue—“‘He’s a real ball of fire!’” Clint wheezes from his beanbag before Natasha pelts him with Milk Duds—while Steve and Tony sit back behind the projector, shoulder to shoulder, running their own private commentary all the while:
“I miss that armor.”
“Shut up, no you don’t.”
“It’s true! Anyways, isn’t vintage all the rage these days? You should bring it back.”
“I’m not bringing back Pointy-Faced Iron Man and his Roller Skates of Doom, Cap.”
“Not even for me?”
Tony slides Steve a look out of the corner of his eye, face still directed toward the screen, a classic are you fucking kidding me? if there ever was one. Steve bats his eyelashes in response, because of course he does. Unfortunately for Steve, Tony is mostly immune to that tactic by now.
Mostly.
“Let us watch Die Hard next week and I’ll consider it.”
“Ugh, Tony…”
“Hey, heart-eyes! Next reel!” someone (see: Bucky) shouts. Not for the first time, Tony’s glad to be concealed in relative darkness back here—even Steve’s enhanced vision won’t be able to make out the blush Tony’s knows is all over his face right now. He also gets a reprieve from sitting so close to Steve, hyperfocused on his warmth and all of the sensory trappings of home that come with it, while he swaps out the old reel for a new one. New-er, rather. He doesn’t look at the case or look at any frames before feeding it through the projector.
“Alright, you rabble-rousers, pipe down,” he shouts as the image on screen flickers to life.
“‘Rabble-rousers’?” Steve quirks an eyebrow at him as he sits back down. Tony folds his arms over his chest and shushes him.
“Don’t start.”
“Ooh, is that you, Tony?” Wanda coos from her place on the loveseat next to Vision.
“Look at all of that hair! Danny Zuko’s got nothing on you, Stark,” Clint laughs. Tony nails him with a popcorn kernel right in the ear.
The footage unspools, harmless—albeit embarrassing—at first: it’s a home movie from when Tony was young, no more than eight or nine. He’s wearing what looks like the remains of what was once a nice suit, something his parents forced him into, probably, but devolved into undershirt and slacks and suspenders hanging down past his knees. He really was a gangly kid, wasn’t he?
Tony laughs along with everyone else, warmed by Jarvis’ voice offscreen telling “Young Master Anthony” to show off his latest invention for the camera. He feels Steve’s eyes flicker over to land on him whenever young Tony smiles at the camera or laughs at something Jarvis says, but Tony ignores it. Mostly.
“He reminds me of Steve,” Bucky tells the room when young Tony is shown with a replica of Cap’s shield, posing triumphantly to the sound of Jarvis’ delighted laughter. Jess aww’s.
“He does, kinda, doesn’t he?”
“How have I never seen these before?” Steve whispers, leaning closer as he does. Tony swallows hard against the shiver that ricochets down his spine hearing that low voice in his ear.
“A lot of things of mine you haven’t seen, Cap,” he replies, too late to stop the innuendo from slipping out. He looks at Steve after he says it and almost, almost lets out a gasp: when did Steve get so close? And why is he looking at Tony like that? All intense and considering?
“Oh, here’s someone else I remember,” Bucky laughs. Tony turns away from Steve, grateful for the excuse, and starts to release the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
It gets caught in his chest the moment he sees himself filling up the screen, young Tony standing alone in Howard’s office, having perched the camcorder on the big oak desk to record himself with Cap’s shield—the real one this time, not a toy. On screen, Tony has his back to the camera, the vibranium shield clutched in his too-small hands. He has to perch it on the floor, its weight just enough to counterbalance Tony’s, but holding it…even now, he remembers the thrill of that first time. The cool touch of vibranium humming under his fingers, the knowledge that he was holding his hero’s greatest treasure…his adult fingers clench against his thighs at the memory.
But then, the image shifts into a sharper memory still, and Tony feels something old and awful claw its way from somewhere deep in his chest, remembering all too well what comes next. It tastes like bourbon and cigar smoke and the metallic taste blood leaves on the tongue after you’ve been smacked in the mouth. Tony’s hands fly out to clutch the sides of his chair and stick there; he can’t move them to stop the projector in time. It just keeps playing out, each frame worse than the one before.
Of course he remembers this moment. He remembers it perfectly, because it was the first time Howard really hurt him. Not with his hands, although the bruises did linger longer than usual, after.
This was the moment when Tony, so tender and impressionable even at that “advanced” age, learned what his father really thought of him.
That old, awful feeling feels a lot like drowning when he thinks of Steve seeing what’s about to happen, let alone the rest of the team.
“I’m Captain America and I’m here to save you!”
“You’re not saving shit, boy.” Howard stumbles into frame like a bad Vaudeville performer, slurring Tony’s name like an expletive. “Put that down, you fucking brat. You’re not worth it.”
The blood rushing in Tony’s ears drowns out the sound of voices past and present. All he can see is Howard filling the frame in that horrible tan suit, gripping a bottle of bourbon by the neck. The image catches on young Tony’s terrified expression, the way he hides behind the shield that’s almost as big as he is. He watches his own mouth move—Cap will save me, he’d cried, so confident, so certain that his hero would come and put Howard through the wall and carry Tony away to safety—and then down the bottle comes…
“Turn it off! I said turn it off!”
Something hits the projector hard enough to not only knock it off the table it was sitting on, but send both hurtling across the room. They smash to pieces against the far wall with a noisy clatter that almost stops Tony’s heart in his chest.
For a moment, the only sound in the room is the thwap-thwap-thwap of film smacking the floor as the reel spins on and on until coming to a feeble stop. He can hear breathing, heavy and labored and sliding quickly toward panic, and he realizes with a shuddering gasp that it’s him making that sound.
Tony looks up and sees Steve standing where the projector once was, cradling his bleeding hand. The man looks stricken, pale and horrified, worse than if he’d seen a ghost; behind him, the team has inched closer, all of them wearing varying expressions of distress and pity and guilt and sadness, and suddenly Tony can’t bolt out of his chair fast enough. He can’t get away fast enough. He follows his feet out of the room into the corridor and down, down, down to the workshop where it’s safe, where he can’t get in, no one can, not unless Tony lets them.
Someone is calling his name, but Tony disappears down the stairs before he can figure out who. He bursts through doors he can’t see and staggers over to the closest workbench, sucking in deep, ragged breaths like he can’t catch up to them. Is that a screw loose in his chest cavity, he wonders, gasping, because that rattling sound seems to indicate something has come undone that shouldn’t have. Howard’s dead, Tony reminds himself, over and over again. It’s a fact as true as any algorithm, so why won’t it take?
JARVIS’s voice moves gently through the noise in Tony’s brain: “Sir, Captain Rogers is asking permission to enter.”
Steve.
Tony can’t decide if the thought of Steve seeing him like this helps or worsens the rattling in his chest. Either way he feels like shit, but only one of those ways ends up with Captain America pitying him, or worse.
He’s so caught up in thinking about all the ways this could backfire he doesn’t realize JARVIS has let Steve into the workshop, regardless of Tony’s feelings on the matter. The realization sets in when Steve’s voice appears close to his ear, soft and low with a frisson of urgency, like he too is slightly out of breath.
“Tony, it’s just me. It’s okay. I’m going to put my hand on your back.”
Warmth spreads from Steve’s fingers through Tony’s shirt and into the skin high up on his back between his shoulders. Steve can probably feel how fast Tony’s heart is racing, but spares him his overt concern and instead keeps telling Tony what he’s going to do before he does it: a hand on Tony’s forehead, an arm around his back, asking JARVIS to turn the lights down to thirty-five percent.
“I’ve got you, it’s okay.”
Tony sags into Steve’s touch, his large, warm hand cradling Tony’s head like something precious; the deeper dark quiets the room around them, makes it less overwhelming, less full of ghosts waiting to cast their own opaque shadows on the empty walls. Tony and Steve are left standing in a dim light Tony knows makes him look sallow; he wavers on his feet, left to borrow from Steve’s strength because he can’t find his own. Lucky for Tony, Steve is right there, braced and ready for anything. Like always.
The rattling has settled somewhat, but Tony still has to rely on Steve to tell him when to breathe and how deeply. He forgets, sometimes, that Steve has experience dealing with panic attacks, which so often came before an asthma attack. Steve once told him that even years removed from his sickly days, he still remembers what it’s like to lose that grip on reality, feeling the heart too acutely as it beats against too-brittle ribs.
While Steve draws on those memories often enough with others on the team, it’s a rare occasion for Tony to be on the receiving end of Steve’s nursing hand like this. Jokes or angry silence over cuts, breaks, and bruises, sure, but this? Tender hands and a voice pitched low and soothing, lullaby-soft, speaking words of gentle encouragement? Tony’s head feels light with it.
“Do you want to sit down?” Steve asks. Tony shakes his head against his palm. “Okay,” Steve whispers, his voice the only one in the room, which makes for a funny kind of one-sided conversation. Then, before he can think better of it, Tony turns toward Steve, wraps his arms around the man’s impossible waist, and hugs himself close to Steve’s radiating heat. He’s too gone for shame, and too weak; a soft, gentle Steve is hard to resist, even on good days. And this just became a no good, very bad day.
Fucking Howard.
Steve, for his part, takes the hug in stride like they do it every day. Tony likes to imagine it, touching Steve like this whenever he wants to, but that’s all it is—a fantasy. Just like being with Steve is a fantasy, one Tony has entertained for far too many years to count. He satisfies himself with Steve’s friendship, tells himself it’s enough, and if he happens to sleep with the occasional look-alike, that’s nobody’s business but Tony’s (and JARVIS’s, and in one deeply unfortunate instance, Pepper’s).
Strangers want Tony Stark, the celebrity; Steve wants Tony as a friend and teammate. That’s all. So Tony steals his nice, platonic hug as he trembles and breathes his way out of a panic attack, being careful to avoid nuzzling the soft notch at the base of Steve’s throat the way he wants to. Badly.
He’s so preoccupied with holding all the disparate parts of himself together and hiding them so Steve can’t see, he doesn’t notice Steve’s hands start to rub his back in long, soothing strokes until Tony is half-melted in his steady arms, weak-kneed at how comforted he feels. Steve doesn’t say anything—just keeps moving his hands, up and down Tony’s back, across his shoulders, along his arms, and over again. He can’t remember the last time someone touched him like this, without motive, ulterior or otherwise; his skin feels warm down to his toes.
“Better?” Steve murmurs. Tony nods against his chest. He doesn’t let go. Neither does Steve, who seems to fold himself over Tony until they’re more like one person than two, standing there breathing together in Tony’s darkened workshop.
Slowly, thoughts of Howard, of hurt, start to melt back into the shadows. In their place is Steve, filling up all of Tony’s empty spaces with light, even some of the ones he didn’t know he had. For such a strong man, Steve is unbearably gentle, handling Tony the way he might handle spun sugar or thin glass. Tony has never felt so genuinely cared for, and the fact that he can’t pull back and thank Steve with a kiss smarts a little in the face of it.
That is, it does, up until the moment he feels Steve brush a kiss against where Tony’s hairline meets his forehead, soft and uncomplicated, but lingering, like Steve wants to stay there. To do more. Tony knows that move because he’s imagined doing the exact same thing to Steve, god, thousands of times.
Tony wants so much. Too much. Asking Steve for this would tip things precariously toward the latter. But the question is taken out of Tony’s hands the moment one of Steve’s perches itself under his jaw and tilts his face up.
“I’m sorry,” Steve says.
“It’s ancient history,” Tony replies, maintaining eye contact through sheer willpower when all he wants to do is look at Steve’s mouth, now so close to his.
“Not to you, it isn’t,” Steve counters, and there’s not much Tony can say to that. “I’ll talk to the team. They might have questions, and you shouldn’t have to answer them. Not tonight, anyways.”
“I know you’ve got big shoulders, Steve, but you don’t have to take on my baggage on top of everything else.”
As they talk, their bodies never move an inch apart; chests pressed flush against each other, Steve’s fingers splayed along the side of Tony’s neck. All of it—the proximity, the tenderness, the intimacy—feels as natural as the breathing they just did together. Ten-plus years of friendship will do that. But then, the way Steve is looking at him doesn’t really scream friendship.
It kind of screams I love you.
Steve gives him that little smirk and says, “Maybe I want to.” Tony scoffs, flicking one of the shoulders in question for good measure.
“God, how are you still such a horrible liar, Cap? Is there something in the serum that makes it impossible for you to keep a good poker face?”
“This is my good poker face,” Steve replies, and there it is again, the same look Steve gave him earlier before the night spun out like a race car with its wheels blown off: intense, considering, and so, so close.
Tony swallows nothing but air. Steve, never breaking eye contact, cards his fingers through the hair on the back of Tony’s head and holds them there.
“If I kiss you right now, will you have another panic attack?” he asks quietly. Not even a blink. The part of Tony’s brain—a scant centimeter, at best—that isn’t currently blasting a hundred sirens at full volume is actually kind of impressed.
“I doubt it,” Tony replies evenly. “I’ll probably just pass out.”
The smirk becomes a full-blown grin. Steve squeezes his other arm around Tony’s lower back and hums, deep and resonant, in his chest as he leans down to brush his lips feather-softly against Tony’s.
“You fall, I’ll catch you,” he whispers before dipping in for a proper kiss that floods Tony’s head with incandescent light. It’s chaste and measured and burning with mutual restraint, tastes faintly of the buttered popcorn Steve ate earlier, and the only way it could be better is if it never ended.
Tony tightens his arms around Steve’s waist, and when Steve pulls away to speak, he doesn’t go far, seemingly content to stand there in Tony’s embrace in the middle of the dimly lit workshop.
“Still breathing?” he asks. Tony smiles; Steve smiles back.
“Takes a lot more than that to knock the wind out of me, Cap.”
The way Steve’s eyes darken at that little remark is definitely something Tony intends to investigate further, later. For now, he leans into the hand now resting on his cheek and sighs.
“We’ll test that theory another time,” Steve husks before leaning forward to press a kiss to each eyelid. Tony hums happily, sinking further into Steve’s arms. “Can I carry you to bed?”
Tony gives him a look. “I’m heavy,” he says.
Steve just smiles, kisses Tony like he’s been doing it forever, and replies: “You’re worth it.”
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
I started posting my SE fix it!
There will be two parts, each five chapters, endgame Steve/Tony. First part is written and will be posted a chapter a day.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Fandom: 616/MCU/X-Men Movies mash-up
Relationship: Cap & Scott friendship
Rating: Teen
“What are your feelings on the mutant threat?!” one of the reporters shouts, and Steve just looks at him.
“I think anyone threatening mutants should be stopped,” he says calmly, and the swarm of reporters explodes, a dozen camera flashes going off at once.
I absolutely adore this. It’s so incredibly rare to see Scott front and centre, and even rarer to see him getting to have actual friends instead of increasingly complicated familial relationships. It’s also nice to see his secondary mutation getting some recognition. Steve feels perfectly in character for his MCU-self, and Scott feels like he did in the comics back when he sometimes got to have light-hearted storylines to break up all the apocalypses.
Um...So I've been remiss on reading Stony lately, and I'm still in the C's (!) which is where I was when I started this blog. Shame. Losing that whole working from home thing after the pandemic just really is a bummer. Anyway, this is the last fic I bookmarked.
Commitment by thedevilchicken
Rating: Teen
Summary: Contrary to popular belief, Tony hates first dates.
Why I'm Reccing: So, I had to reread this one because it's been a while and I have a terrible memory (which is great for me cause I can reread fics and it's like the first time, lmao) but, like, immediately, one paragraph in and I'm grinning like an absolute fool.
So, Logan and Peter bet Tony that he can't get a decent guy of their choosing to actually go out with him. They bet him twenty whole dollars, and Tony is never one to walk away from a challenge. And the decent guy of their choosing is, of course, Steve.
Gah, reading this back, this fic is really really good. I really don't want to spoil anything, but it's fun, and funny, and even though it's short, it never once goes the direction that you're expecting it to.
I also like this inversion of tropes. Because Tony is the nervous one on this first date, and we usually get self-assured Tony for first date fics, but despite the flip on common tropes, I feel like the characterization of both Tony and Steve is just absolutely nailed. This entire fic is just so them. Like them in the best possible way, and I smiled through my entire reread because I absolutely adore every single line of this fic.
This fic is utterly delightful and it is very underrated. Please go show this fic some love.
Her first car is a 89 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. It’s not new, but it’s in good shape and it should last her for a few years. More importantly, the older woman selling it has it priced to move which means Carol doesn’t need to ask her father for a loan.
Soon she’s not going to have to ask her father for anything.
The car is dark red, almost maroon, and the interior is almost the same shade. The radio looks brand-new and the car is spotlessly clean. The tires are a little worn, but they’ll last her at least a year. She’ll need to replace the windshield wipers and the air filter, and the oil is overdue to be changed, but that’s all work she can do herself.
She runs her hand over the hood while the seller goes back into the house to get the title. She’ll have to hide the car for a few days, but that should be easy enough. If she parks it a couple of blocks away her father will never suspect. The hard part will be smuggling her things out without anyone noticing.
Six days.
In six days she’ll be eighteen. No one can stop her from leaving then.
The seller comes back out. She’s a tiny thing - barely five feet tall with hair died a vivid red. She’s wearing a lilac jogging suit and she’s told Carol a dozen stories about her three grandchildren who live in New Jersey. “All yours, honey.”
She hands over the title and Carol hands her the envelope full of hundred dollar bills. It’s almost the entirety of her life savings, every penny she’s saved over the last year since finding out that she’d have to make her own plans if she wanted to go to college. She has enough left for gas, a hotel and a few meals. After that…
Well. JBSA-Lackland has cadet housing and a mess hall. It would be a while before Carol could go off base, that’s all.
She was going to get an education. She was going to get a job that didn’t require her to smile prettily and flirt with every old man who came into the store.
She was going to fly.
Carol patted the hood of the car one last time before she opened the door and slid behind the wheel. The Air Force. Her Master’s degree. NASA.
She still has the same car more than ten years later when the Air Force makes her a full-bird colonel, when NASA calls her, when she meets MarVell.
It’s destroyed by Iron Man during the attack at the Cape. She doesn’t know this for weeks as she recovers from her encounter with the Psyche-Magnitron.
(When they finally let her out, Tony Stark is there sheepish and apologetic and Carol wonders how the hell no one has figured Iron Man’s secret identity out yet)
“I can replace it,” he offers. “I’m sure I can find another one - or rebuild yours. It might take a little while to find original parts, but we could make it good as new.”
Carol’s car was last seen flat as a pancake in the NASA employee lot. Large portions of it had been melted into slag. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not like the attack was Iron Man’s fault.”
“Well, it’s not your fault either,” Stark points out with a cheerful sort of benevolence that Carol has no way of knowing she’ll one day be intimately familiar with. “Look, I know the Air Force doesn’t pay you that much-”
“I,” Carol says with a great deal of relish, “am a full-bird colonel with astronaut training and super powers.”
She knows her smile is slightly manic. Stark throws his head back and laughs.
“I like you,” he says. “Forget about the Oldsmobile. I’ll owe you one. Call me when you’re ready to cash it in.”
She mostly forgets about it over the next few weeks as she finds out that NASA appreciates super powers far less than she’d anticipated. She ends up in Chicago, demoted and making exactly as little pay as Stark had assumed she did. She’s angry and a little bitter and if NASA wants to burn her for something that was done to her in the line of duty she can burn them right back.
Stark calls her back in less than twenty-four hours. “A publishing deal?” he says on her answering machine. “Danvers, any jackass can get published.”
He doesn’t call back after that, but the contract comes in the mail three days later, a fat stack of papers promising Carol Danvers a hefty advance for an as-yet-undetermined book of to-be-determined content and length with full media exposure.
There’s a small white envelope taped to the front of the contract. When Carol opens it a car key falls out into her palm.
She looks at it for a minute, then marches downstairs to stare at the maroon 89 Oldsmobile parked in front of her building.
She curls her fingers around the key and for the first time in weeks - for the first time since that day at the Cape when she’d shared a smile with Tony Stark over her brand-new super powers - Carol smiles.
“What kind of ring would an American icon want to be proposed with?”
Pepper’s coffee mug fell to the floor with a resounding crash, and her head whipped up from her laptop to look at the man standing in front of her. She pressed the back of her hand to his forehead.
“No fever…” she stated, and her eyebrows furrowed.
Tony rolled his eyes. “Seriously, Pep. I need help here.”
“Are you asking me what I think you’re asking me?”
“What do you think I’m asking you?”
“You need advice on how to propose to Captain America.”
“No, I need advice on the ring. I already know how I’m going to propose to Steve.”
“You don’t have something embarrassing like a huge musical number and fireworks show planned, do you? Because you should know that Steve Rogers is a man of simple tastes.”
“Of course not.”
“Nothing Vegas themed?”
“I think I know my man, Pep.”
“Does he know that you call him ‘your man’?”
“Yes—no… maybe? I call him a lot of things.”
“That, he does,” said Clint as he strode into the kitchen, “Your room is right above mine.”
“These walls are soundproof, Barton!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Clint said, brushing him off. He poured himself a cup of coffee. “You keep telling yourself that.”
“Why are you here anyway?” Tony asked. “I thought you got your own place.”
“I like it here better,” Clint replied. “I can’t afford my own Jarvis.”
“You really need someone to pick up after you? Have a little dignity, Barton.”
Clint scoffed. “I’m sorry, but I think dignity went out the window for you when we found you in that ridiculous red thong last year—”
“Oookay,” Pepper intervened. “It looks like this is going to go on for a while, so I’m leaving.”
“But—the ring!” Tony sputtered.
“You can figure it out, Tony,” Pepper called over her shoulder as she made her way to the elevator.
Tony turned his attention back to the archer who now had a very curious expression on his face.
“What ring?”
“It’s nothing,” Tony grunted, making a beeline for his workshop.
Unfortunately, Clint blocked the doorway. “Are you trying to do what I think you’re trying to do?”
“You can think?”
Clint ignored him. “You’re going to propose to Cap?”
Tony sighed. “At this rate? Not anytime soon.”
Clint looked at the other man thoughtfully for a moment before grabbing his arm and dragging him out of the room.
Because I'm excited about this one, have a little fic preview:
Your last few days on earth and you’re going to spend them brooding and staring at the ceiling? he silently berated himself, but before he could even try to figure out what to do or, more likely, make excuses, his phone rang. Of course his first instinct was to ignore it, but with Barney asleep and nothing else to do but think, it served as a welcome distraction.
Trudging over to where it hung on the wall, Clint answered in a low voice so as not to wake his brother, despite the shrill ringing that had just echoed through the apartment. “Hello?”
“Hi, it’s me,” an instantly recognizable voice replied. “I wasn’t sure if you would hear the phone.”
“Got a new set of hearing aids. Just in time, eh?” he said, wincing at his own words. Now probably wasn’t the time to joke about it, but he was so surprised to hear from her that he hadn’t even attempted to turn on his filter yet. Nobody called him unless they needed him, and it wasn’t like anyone would need him now, so he had expected Kate, or maybe Steve, but not her, not Natasha.
“Have to make sure you can hear the end when it comes,” she replied, and Clint found himself laughing for the first time in what felt like years. He heard a light chuckle from the other end of the line and felt his anxiety dissipate. Maybe now was the time to joke about the end, because there wasn’t much time left.
