#melisssaaaaa

[kickingshoes]

IT WAS SO GOOD DGAKDJFHGKLDAHFJGK

[redonledgers]

in which tony stark and rose tyler are friends, part 1

A/N: This part takes place prior to Journey's End and Tony's adventures in Afghanistan. This is crack.

&&

They meet in downtown Manhattan over pizza and red wine. She's on a mission from Torchwood, to successfully create a means of trans-dimensional travel that does not rip holes in the fabric of reality. He's on a mission assigned by his dick, because the mysterious Vitex heiress is smoking hot and wears a lot of leather. 

Of course, she's also got twenty-seven firearms, knives and electro-grenades strapped to her body, twelve of which he could see on the inside of her jacket alone, and so his dick is not planning on making a showing tonight.

Never let it be said that Tony Stark has no sense of cock-preservation.

Unfortunately, she's got this habit where her tongue sort of does whatever the fuck it wants, and oh yes, those lips most definitely need a good moisturizing. 

"Eyes up here, soldier," she drawls with a smirk, and there's a glint in her eyes and huh. She's got sauce on her chin.

"You've um... got a little--uh," he starts, pointing at her chin but brushing over her mouth with his thumb. She raises a brow and licks the pad of his thumb before it rubs her chin clean. "Sauce."

She laughs, and it's a hearty, head-thrown-back-in-delight laugh. He almost--almost--feels proud that he's entertained this glorious woman, with her tired honey eyes and cheeks that match her namesake, and if he doesn't get to share a bed with her, he's going to have Pepper call for any blonde escort who can fake a British accent (if she isn't actually English) and do that thing with her tongue.

"So what brings you to New York, Miss Tyler?" he asks eventually, gazing unabashedly at her mouth.

She doesn't miss a beat. "I felt like bein' ogled over by some middle-aged self-loathing playboy with a hero complex. You?"

"The pizza, of course."

His companion-type-person grins. "Well, you've got good taste. I only ever order pizza from Lombardi's, myself. Get it flown in."

"Perks of being the daughter of the richest man in the UK," he says and folds his next slice, prepping for the ever-important First Bite.

"Perks of being the woman who saved the owner and his wife from a pair of nasty Weeping Angels."

Ah yes. Apart from being breathtakingly gorgeous, she's also supremely competent. Not that he knows what a Weeping Angel is, and to be frank, he's not got time for fundamentalist evangelicals, so he hopes she's not one of them. But the way she says it, and the way the owner comes out and shuts the entire restaurant for "Signorina Rosa and that crazy Stark man from the papers," well, he doesn't get the vibe that they're a friendly bunch.

"So, Torchwood finally ready to invest in good ol' Stark tech?"

She smiles all too politely. "Stark Industries ready to tap into temporal physics?"

He laughs. "Temporal physics is entirely theoretical, Miss Tyler. Stark Industries prefers to deal in the existential."

There's something frightfully knowing about her eyes when she speaks next. "Oh, well then I suppose you wouldn't want to help us construct a means of trans-dimensional travel that doesn't rip holes in the fabric of reality."

"Well, now that you put it like that..."

He might have agreed to meet Rose Tyler in accordance with his penis, but he ends up signing a contract with Torchwood when his brain starts calculating the odds that Rose Tyler is onto something.

Something mind-numbingly big.

&&

He never actually ends up sleeping with Rose Tyler. It's not because he's not completely into her, or even that she's not into him (he caught that hitch of her breath that time in the lab, the lingering touch of her fingers against his as she stares at the newly updated dimensional hopper, her eyes warm and soft as she bids him a safe trip back to California) but rather that they both find the sexual tension to be almost bearable. Helpful, even. 

He asks her why she does what she does one day after a test drive failed pretty miserably. 

"I have nothing else in this world," she murmurs before turning her gaze on him. "Why do you develop weapons?"

Tony frowns. "Because someone's got to do it."

Rose turns her attention back to her computer for a moment. "I had this friend, a long time ago, who aimed a missile at my head because I told him to. I thought, well I'm obviously gonna die here, but we'd save the world from a nuclear shitstorm, and so I realized that someone had to do it. Take the fall." 

"How'd you live?"

Her lips curve. "10 Downing Street has some fucking sturdy walls."

&&

Tony Stark is a certified genius. The brightest scientific mind in the world. But even he can't make the walls of the universe open up for him.

Until the bees disappear. Until the stars start going out.

Until Rose Tyler calls him and tells him that she's made a successful jump, and that she's been gone for two weeks--her time; she'd only been gone twenty-seven minutes Earth time--and does he have any ideas on boosting the power quotient so that she doesn't need to let the damned thing recharge each time she jumps?

He pilots his zeppelin to Canary Wharf, Pepper in tow as always, and sweeps Rose up into a hug when she greets him on the tarmac. 

She doesn't look well. There are cuts and bruises and lacerations all over her face and arms, and she's pale. Really pale. 

"Have your doctors run any tests?" he asks as she serves up some of her father's cognac.

Rose stills. "I'm fine, Tony."

"You look like a murder victim, were you to have been reanimated or propped up behind your desk by some really fucked up ventriloquist."

Pepper lets out an exasperated "Tony!" from behind him. 

"'M just tired, is all. Surprisingly, traveling between universes is actually a bit exhausting. And I haven't slept since I left here the other day."

"Well it's good you're getting nice and sloshed, then."

Two sets of eyes glare at him. It's slightly unnerving.

And by slightly, he means completely.

"Anyway, I need you to look at the multilinear fluctuation monitor, because it's sort of way inaccurate. I needed to get to Alexandria, Virginia in 1983, and it took me to the Library of Alexandria."

"Ah."

She nods. "Yeah."

&&