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“Tony? Tony, are you in there? Tony? C’mon, Tony, you need to at least pretend to care about the ball, there’s a lot riding on this…”
“Tony?”
“Tony, seriously, I’m going to break down this door if you don’t- what they hell Tony, it’s not even locked yo-“
“. . . Tony?”
- - -
Tony Stark hummed contentedly to himself as he walked down the woodland path, making a few turns and – without hesitating for a second – veering straight down the abandoned trail that he’d always been told in no uncertain terms to never go down. He figured going places no one else was willing to go could probably buy him a few more hours away from responsibility, building things he didn’t particularly want to build, and, well, Obie.
Sometimes, Tony felt bad that he put so much effort into avoiding his father’s trusted friend. Then he remembered that, one, Obie was a great businessman but understood nothing about the delicate science of creation and two, Tony didn’t actually like his father all that much.
The trees started to thin out after about an hour. Tony wasn’t too clear on why no one came down here, because it was lovely (as nature went. Normally, Tony and nature Did Not Get Along, but desperate times and all that) after the part with all of the really ominous twisty branches and gleaming white pieces of maybe-bone. Eh, who cared, he had some scraps to play with and new toys to test, he just needed an empty field…
Or, oh hey, abandoned mansion, that would work, too. Cool.
- - -
The door was less creaky than Tony had been expected for a mansion that looked so rundown. Mentally shrugging it off, he poked his head inside.
“Hello? Anyone home?”
An echoing silence was his only answer, so he decided to take that as the ringing endorsement it clearly was, and went inside. The interior was, like the door, in startlingly good repair, particularly when compared to the run-down grounds and crumbling walls outside. There wasn’t even any dust in the corners.
Tony, not being one to become worried over something before it had happened with enough force to interrupt whatever he had been doing (inventing, sexing, or boozing, generally), started to explore.
He got about twenty feet before a voice shouted at him, “WHERE THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING?”
Tony looked around, but didn’t see anyone who might be yelling at him. Still, talking to voices that came from nowhere had never sounded like a particularly bad idea to him (he’d always wanted something that could run all his calculations for him and remind him to eat and practically read his mind, he felt that it would be great fun), so he replied, “I don’t know yet, but where the fuck are you?”
There was a momentary pause, before the voice boomed again, “OVER HERE. I’M BLINKING AT YOU.”
Confused, Tony looked around before he finally spotted a large marble bust of a very intimidating man with no hair, an eye patch, and a scowl. It was, indeed, blinking (or maybe winking? Tony was never sure about these things) at him.
Seeing as this wasn’t even the weirdest thing to happen to Tony this week, he sauntered over and started examining the base of the statue. To his surprise, it leaned away from him slightly.
“HEY, THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”
Tony winced and rubbed at his ear. “Checking to see what you’ve got rigged up to make a statue move. Also, do you have to be so deafening all the time? Really knocks off my groove.”
The furrow between the statue’s eyebrows deepened. “NO, I CANNOT TONE IT DOWN. STATUES DO NOT COME WITH VOLUME CONTROL. IT MAKES IT VERY DIFFICULT TO DO MY MOTHERFUCKING JOB, SO I WOULD APPRECIATE IT IF YOU WOULD STOP COMMENTING.”
He squinted at the statue for a moment, trying to decide if this was some kind of practical joke, before giving up and asking, “Okay, so what is your job?”
“I,” the statue said, looking quite pleased with itself, but still scowling, “AM NICK FURY, THE DIRECTOR OF THIS HOUSEHOLD.”
“Oh,” said Tony, “Uh, it’s nice to meet you? Tony Stark.”
The statue, however, no longer seemed to be paying attention. It twisted around (with the creak of tortured stone, which was so not a sound Tony was enjoying) to glare down a hallway and shout at someone else instead.
“BARTON! ROGERS! GET YOUR ASSES OUT HERE, THERE’S A GUEST.”
- - -
Barton and Rogers, as it turned out, were a candelabra and an old fashioned alarm clock (respectively). Fury had bellowed for a few minutes before shooing them all off (an impressive move, seeing as he didn’t have any hands), and that was the story of how Tony found himself being herded through the disturbingly pristine hallways of the mansion by a couple of household objects.
They both kept shooting him nervous glances as they went, and eventually Tony got tired enough of the scrutiny to snap a sharp “what?” in the direction of Rogers, who immediately looked away and blushed. The fucking alarm clock was blushing and so Tony stared.
It was a fascinating and more than a little disturbing process.
Fortunately, Rogers seemed to recover quickly, because he replied. “It’s just, well, we never get visitors. Ever since the evil enchanter, no one wants to be around the place.”
Barton nodded agreement, and then managed to open a door without setting fire to it or using the doorknob. Tony was reluctantly impressed, and was still curious enough that he willingly followed the two inside. Only to come face to face with a very plain, very tidy wardrobe.
Barton grinned, for the first time looking more like someone who knew how to have fun and less like… well, less like a murderous candelabra. “Phil!”
The wardrobe glared. It was not a thing that should be possible, but Tony found it strangely intimidating. Barton apparently had no such reservations, because he leapt at the large piece of furniture, which responded by opening one of its drawers and catching him.
“Clint,” said Phil-the-wardrobe, none-too-subtly eyeing Tony but still managing to sound like he was having a pleasant chat with someone over coffee. “Who is this, and why have you brought them this far into the house?”
“He,” said Clint, “is the one who’s gonna break the curse.”
“I’M GOING TO WHAT?” demanded Tony.
- - -
Once upon a time, there was a researcher. He had been given lots of grant money and told to stay out of everyone’s hair (and to keep everyone else out of the blast radius), and so he wound up living in a house in the middle of nowhere researching gamma radiation. The grant money had come with an assistant, a Miss Virginia Potts, who was frighteningly competent and made sure he ate and slept reasonably often while doing most of the paperwork. The government contract that the grant money was tied to came with Captain Steve Rogers, a semi-retired sort-of-living-legend soldier whose new job was to keep an eye on any dangerous projects.
The house, as it turned out, was – though an interdepartmental paperwork snafu – also reserved as a backup base of operations for a covert government agency. This caused fewer problems than would be expected, as Agent Phil Coulson, who was in charge of the operation that happened to need the house, got along alarmingly well with Miss Potts and was quite fond of Captain Rogers. Agent Coulson brought with him, as a matter of course, Specialists Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton, who – amazingly – trusted (well, tolerated) most of the people in the house.
The researcher was a little bit baffled by this turn of events, but was perfectly content to continue his work around people who didn’t ask stupid questions (and occasionally asked quite insightful ones), weren’t intimidated by big words, and sometimes brought him sandwiches.
Everything was going very well, until an evil enchanter (or a wizard, or a magician, or a god, no one was really sure) named Loki showed up, and – for no reason anyone could discern – mucked about with some of the equipment, causing a horrific accident that had permanently damaged the researcher and then decided to go and curse everyone, possibly because it was a Tuesday.
Tuesdays had never really gone well for the household.
The director of the covert government agency had happened to be there in a meeting, so it was anyone’s guess as to how well the covert government agency was doing the absence of the director, the director’s one good eye, and the director’s one good eye’s two best specialists. It was generally agreed upon, however, that Deputy Director Hill and Agent Sitwell were probably doing fine, since there had been no reports of Canada exploding yet.
“. . . and that,” Clint informed Tony solemnly, “is why you’re our only hope.”
Tony stared at the candelabra, then at the objects (people?) around him in turn. Phil had stayed upstairs, due to being a wardrobe (and therefore not managing stairs or doorways very well), and Fury was stuck in the entryway for obvious reasons, but the rest of them had gathered in the kitchen to explain everything.
Miss Potts (“call me Pepper, please”) had poured him tea, which had been decidedly creepy at first (seeing as she was the teapot it was brewed in, and all), but that Tony had eventually consumed anyway in an effort to avoid going into shock over the whole someone had rested all of their hopes on him thing, because that was something that should not happen, ever. Also, Tony was no longer confused about why everything was so terrifyingly dust free: Natasha was the most chillingly competent feather duster anyone would ever meet, and Tony was pretty sure she could kill him in less than a second and without much thought. It was just a vibe she gave off or something.
“Uh, you never actually did explain how, exactly, I’m supposed to help with anything.” Tony prompted, looking for some way out of this. It was crazy, sure, and normally he reveled in crazy but right now it was seeming like the not-fun kind of crazy, which you should back away slowly and steadily from while hoping it doesn’t notice you.
There was a brief, silent squabble between those assembled and then Steve had sighed and turned to face Tony. “We need you to befriend the researcher. Or the um, other guy.”
Tony stared at Steve. Steve stared at Tony. Eventually, Clint interrupted.
“Look, what Steve is trying to say is that the curse can only be broken by the true power of brotherhood or some such crap. Banner doesn’t have any brothers, so we thought maybe… since you’re here and would actually get what he’s talking about… there could be like, a substitution of science-enthusiasm for actual relation to each other.”
Tony stopped staring at Steven in favor of staring at Clint. “That might actually be the stupidest thing I’ve ever- wait, did you say Banner? As in, Bruce Banner? As in, the genius physicist who went missing a couple years ago right before he was supposed to publish some really promising looking results on gamma radiation?”
“Um.” Said Steve, “Yes?”
“I’m in.” Tony decided. “When do we start?”
- - -
As it turned out, there were several problems with finding a scientist in a huge building who didn’t want to be found, particularly when there was a large group following you with varying degrees of enthusiasm (Steve) and/or suspicion (Natasha).
Eventually, Tony got sick of trying and decided something must be done. So he opened his mouth and blurted out the first thing that came to mind, which was: “Why don’t you guys, uh, go make dinner or something, and I’ll find Dr. Banner and meet you in the dining room?”
There was some muttered discussion before a decision was apparently reached, because Tony abruptly found himself alone in the hallway. With no idea where to look.
Sighing, Tony retraced his steps to the room where Coulson had first been, and was slightly relieved to discover that the wardrobe was still there.
“So um.” He began awkwardly, and then dispensed with that right away, because if there was one thing Tony Stark Did Not Do, it was awkward. “Hey Agent, any idea where I could find Dr. Banner?”
Coulson shot Tony an unimpressed look (which, coming from a wardrobe, was sort of amazing). “Dr. Banner spends most of his time in the West Wing.”
“Cool, thanks, I’ll just be going then.”
- - -
“Dr. Banner? Hellloooooo?”
The West Wing was dark, but surprisingly un-creepy, given how much of a big deal everyone had made it seem. There was a lot of busted stuff, sure, but there wasn’t like, an overwhelming sense of danger or anything. Of course, it’s also possible that Tony was just dense, because he didn’t bother picking his way through broken masonry and shattered glass – he just barreled on through as he’d always done.
There was no answering call, but that had never stopped Tony before, so he opened the door at the end of the (totally not ominous) hallway without announcing himself.
The room within was significantly less destroyed than the hallway, full of softly glowing monitors and reams of paper (Tony glanced at a couple to see neat columns of printed data – a readout of some kind – along with sloppy, handwritten notes, which seemed to be evaluating risk factors of the radiation). All the damage in here had been carefully swept away, so there were only the missing pieces in the walls and hairline cracks in some of the equipment to hint that something had happened.
“Dr. Banner?” Tony tried again, sitting down at the desk that was half buried in a sea of graph paper and lab notebooks.
No answer came. Tony shrugged, then a roughly plotted histogram caught his attention in the pile of papers, and he carefully picked it up to examine.
- - -
“Where the fuck is he? It’s been hours!”
“Give him some time, Clint, Bruce is pretty hard to find. Plus, they have to actually talk to each other.”
“Thank you for that input, Pepper. That doesn’t mean I can’t worry about it.”
“Hey guys, dinner was supposed to be two hours ago, maybe we should take it to them?”
“With what hands, Cap? Cuz I don’t know if you forget this sometimes, but mine are, y’know, candles that are on fire.”
“Clint…”
“I- sorry, Cap, I just want this to work.”
“I know.”
- - -
“Who are you, and why are you in my lab?” a quiet voice said, breaking through Tony’s mental haze of science, and he looked up to see a nervous-looking man hovering in the doorway.
Well, he was already seated in the middle of the floor, surrounded by Banner’s notes and equations and data, where he’d apparently been for hours. It’s not like he had all that much dignity to lose, so.
“Tony Stark,” he said, putting all of his not-insignificant charm into his smile that was probably slightly deranged at this point. Sue him, it’s been a trying day. “Genius, billionaire, yada-yada-yada. So hey, this is looking pretty good, but I was wondering if you’d considered…”
And Tony kept talking while Banner processed through whatever was making him look like someone had just promised him candy and then fed him a lemon, before finally the curly-haired scientist turned, rummaged around a desk for a while, handed over a stack of graph paper that Tony had missed earlier, and started to explain the missing pieces.
- - -
“Are you sure they’re all right?” asked Steve hesitantly from his position spying through the crack in the door. Clint, who had somehow maintained all his freaky-acrobat tricks while being a candelabra, snorted in response and pressed his eye closer to the keyhole (Steve was very carefully not considering the fact that if he wiggled too much in either direction he was going to fall right off of that door handle, just you watch, and give them all away).
“Yeah, they’re fine. That’s science happening in there, let me tell yo-“
He cut off abruptly at Bruce’s startled “ow!” and everyone immediately flinched before feeling guilty about it and going back to their spying.
Tony was grinning smugly at Bruce, who look irritated but not at all green. “See? You’ve totally got a lid on it. Knew it. So stop it with the awkward personal space thing, I don’t do personal space, everyone knows this, c’mon, science.”
And that, it would appear, was that.
- - -
A week or so later, when the household (minus Tony, who is oblivious, and Bruce, who is nervous for different reasons but at least is eating with them semi-regularly now) has really started to panic again about the possibility of never again having opposable thumbs because the deadline is imminent, Tony crows with delight over some equation that had finally been worked out (half on real paper, half on the kitchen floor, Natasha was going to murder him when she found out) and shoves his fist in Bruce’s direction.
When nothing happens, Tony raises his eyebrows meaningfully and is probably considering pouting before Bruce finally sighs, smiles a quiet little smile, and reaches out to tap it with his own fist.
Everything explodes into green light, there is a long moment of quiet while everyone processes the fact that they once again have limbs (and, in Clint’s case, those limbs are no longer on fire), and then Tony makes a faux-scandalized noise and shouts, delightedly, “Oh my god, clothes, what is wrong with you people shouldn’t that be a priority?”
(For the record, it is for most of them - except Clint and Phil, which everyone is carefully not thinking about – but as it turns out almost everything that wasn’t Bruce’s (and therefor in regular use) was moth-eaten, moldy, or just unacceptably filthy in other ways, so they ended up with a house full of people wearing purple button downs that didn’t fit anyone right, including Bruce, for a day or so before Hurricane Tony happened.)
In the meantime, Tony smirks and wanders off with a vague call of “gonna call some people, change some things, Stark Industries is moving in I hired you all don’t argue” (despite the fact that half of them were totally going to argue later because they were theoretically still in charge of that covert government agency), but not before ruffling Bruce’s hair fondly and shooting an appreciative glance at Steve’s ass that no one misses but everyone is too nice to mention in case Steve actually manages to set himself on fire by blushing.
And they all lived happily ever after.
(Or, well, as close to that as you get in a household like theirs.)