Work Text:
Disclaimers: As someone who is proud she can replace the light in a Saturn but fails at it in a Prius, I think it's plain that I could not create Tony Stark. And as I can't draw, I am certainly not claiming the MCU as mine.
There is nothing in this you couldn't send to your aunt Sally. How is she, by the way?
Unbetaed at the moment. If that changes, this will be vastly improved and I will credit the credible sources. At the moment I'm really just posting this to test my coding skills and this is very short. Anyway, comments may be sent to me, assuming that comments will happen.
Stark's Iron Gall Ink
The gel ink glittered in the sunlight.
“You realize someone invented that? In the time it took that someone at, what, Pilot? Let’s say Pilot - in the time it took someone at Pilot to think of it, design it, develop an ink with enough viscosity to allow for the solids but with a quick enough drying time to prevent smearing, not to mention a delivery system that would allow for fluid and solids - “
“Bic was looking into gel inks in the eighties,” Bruce said. Natasha’s desire, the moment before he interrupted Tony’s monologue was that someone would interrupt Tony’s monologue, which, after he did so, she amended to someone besides Bruce.
“Oh yeah?” Tony asked. Bruce nodded, not that Natasha saw this. But this is Bruce, working on something else while on the comms. It's also Bruce when he's alone, hidden away where he thinks no one can see him, working on projects and nodding to himself, or shaking his head. There are few who can keep up with him, so Natasha surmises that Bruce's actions are a way to keep tabs on himself: Careful, you don't want to get cocky.
“I knew someone working on it. They didn’t get far,” Bruce was saying
“No, not after Stark bought up the only workable patent at the time.”
Clint would have been a good choice, Natasha thinks. He’d have just said shut up and they’d have had to pay attention, seeing as he was in the crow’s nest. Steve was still getting over the idea of a ball point. They were just hitting the mass market around the time he finally got to do his part for the war effort.
“Your dad was interested in ink?”
Tony rattled his drink, the sound almost a stand-in for him. “Not really, but his brother still ran the ink division. I think it was a Christmas present.”
“You guys have an ink divi-”
“Hey, Tony,” Clint said, “how much money did you make in the time it took to think out what you need to do to invent ink?”
There was a pause on the comms, and then Tony answered with a figure that was more than Natasha had made on her last non-governmental gig.
“Go on three,” Steve said, and everyone waited to see the trail from Clint’s arrow.
“And for the record,” Natasha said, “I like glitter pens. That’s why.”
She watched the smoke rise into the sky.