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Tony was going to strangle someone.
Probably Maximoff, maybe Rogers, but if they didn't leave him the fuck alone in the next five minutes, he was going to snap.
“Tony, you can’t just block her magic,” Steve whined. “It's a part of her. No one tries to block you from tinkering.”
Tony snorted a laugh. “I’m not even going to touch any part of that. That's a level of delusion that i simply cannot touch.”
“Stark, remove the wards you have against my powers,” Maximoff hissed. “Don't be petty because someone’s more powerful than you.”
Tony hummed. “If the wards I set up block the ever so powerful you,” he mused. “Doesn't that, by definition, make me more powerful? Besides, the only ward is to stop you from accessing my head. Are you trying to get into my head, Maximoff?”
Maximoff’s eyes and fingertips glowed red.
“Touch me,” Tony said seriously. “and you’re out. Are we clear?”
Maximoff looked like she was ready to try anyway. Rogers put a hand on her shoulder and led her away.
“Relax, Wanda,” he said as he left. “He’ll come around.”
“No, I won’t!” Tony called. His hands were in tight fists to stop them from shaking. At least the wards had worked. Small mercies and all that.
---
"I literally cannot handle Rogers’s condescension,” Tony huffed, flopping bonelessly against Rhodey.
Rhodey, Pepper, Stephen, and himself were gathered in the penthouse, using one of their sparse nights off to chat and play shitty games. Tony had already won at Jenga (seriously, who plays Jenga with an engineer?) and they had to stop Monopoly after an hour of just Tony and Pepper trying to beat each other. They had given up on Sorry after one too many dies flared gold before landing. They had decided to try poker (forgetting that Tony was a math genius. Not that he planned to remind them, of course…)
“Not as bad as Maximoff,” Stephen complained. “I was trying to explain magical ethics to her today, that just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should , and she refused to get the point that mind control is bad .”
“I see your Maximoff, I raise you Romanoff,” Pepper added. “She keeps trying to dip into SI accounts and contracts. Of course, FRIDAY catches her every time, but she doesn’t leave enough of a digital footprint to prove it was her, so I can’t do anything.”
“I vote we kick them out,” Rhodey said, pushing a few poker chips into the center of the table.
“Condition of their pardon,” Pepper sighed. “I’ve already tried all the loopholes. The only way to get them out is with a provable assault, and that’s not something I’m going to hope for.”
“I could banish them to the dark dimension,” Stephen said nonchalantly, putting down his cards. “Also, I win.”
“Not so fast,” Tony chided. “My hand is better. So, suck my d-”
Rhodey groaned an interruption. “Weird bedroom stuffs stays in the bedroom, Tones!” he cried. “We’ve had this rule since MIT! Follow it!” Stephen raised an eyebrow at Tony but stayed silent.
Pepper snorted with amusement. “That’s not even the weirdest thing I’ve heard him say today,” she pointed out.
“You’re right,” Stephen agreed. “He did say something about tentacles this morning-”
Tony squawked indignantly and smacked Stephen in the face with a pillow. “I said that in confidence!”
“That is our cue to leave,” Rhodey said, standing and offering a hand to Pepper. “I don’t need to hear about Tony and tentacles.”
“Me neither,” Pepper shuddered. “Bye, you two!”
Tony and Stephen waved and Stephen put away the games with a flick of his wrist.
“I love magic,” Tony smiled. “Makes cleanup so much easier.”
“Fri, I hope you got that. That’s my new ringtone.”
“You don’t have a phone!” Tony laughed. The pair sat in comfortable silence cuddling on the sofa for a while.
“Want to take a day off tomorrow?” Stephen asked. “You look like you need it.”
Tony glared and stuck his tongue out. “Thanks, you look good, too.”
“You know what I mean, Tony,” Stephen said. “Say the word, I’ll conjure up some magic emergency across the globe that only Iron Man and Doctor Strange can stop.”
“I wish,” Tony replied wistfully. “But Maximoff’s acting up and I don’t want to leave Vis here by himself. Besides, I have, like, seventeen meetings tomorrow that I can’t miss. God, I hate responsibility.”
Stephen made a sympathetic noise. “I can stage a kidnapping,” he suggested.
“I might actually take you up on that, call me after my fifth meeting and we’ll see.”
“Why fifth?” Stephen asked. “Normally you can do ten without asking for a kidnapping.”
“All five are about the Rogues,” Tony groaned. “The first three are different agencies asking about Maximoff; how we’re handling her powers, how stable she is, so on and so forth. I think I’m gonna need you to do a magic evaluation on her at some point, I’ll keep you posted. The other two are about the sheer amount of collateral they’re causing on every mission. The recommendation from the Council is to bench them; at least, it will be tomorrow.”
“They’re not going to take that well,” Stephen said, not phrasing it as a question.
“Nope!” Tony agreed. “But it's be benched or pay their own damn fees, so I’m pretty sure they’ll pick the bench.”
“Want backup when you tell them?”
“You? Always,” Tony said, curing into Stephen’s lap. “Now, play with my hair and cuddle me.”
“Bossy, bossy,” Stephen laughed, but he complied.
---
“I’m sorry, but for the immediate future, you all are benched from active duty,” Tony said to the assembled Rogues. “I can go into detail on the reasons if you want, but it really has to do with the amount of collateral damage you guys do.”
Romanoff looked disgusted. “I didn’t think you’d be this petty, Stark,” she hissed before slipping away, presumably to get the information confirmed and double confirmed.
Wilson and Lang also left with glares, knowing not to provoke Tony, because they wouldn’t win. They figured Rogers would handle it and they’d be back on active duty in no time.
“Wow, Stark, congratulations,” Barton sneered, clapping slowly. “You’ve officially destroyed the Avengers!”
“And you destroyed several millions of dollars worth of New York property, but who’s counting, right?” Tony snarked back, not missing a beat.
“Can’t you just pay for it?” Barton spat. “You’re rich, that’s all you’re good for.”
Tony kept himself from flinching back, but it was a close thing. Luckily, Barton stomped off before Stephen could lecture him, though Tony didn’t doubt that Barton was about to have some bad luck.
“Tony, you can’t do this,” Rogers pleaded.
“I think you’ll find that I didn’t,” Tony deadpanned back. “The Council did, and I’m inclined to agree. Your last mission landed forty people in the hospital. I ran the sims, and me by myself could’ve done better than you with a whole team of people geared at preventing collateral.”
“You can’t save everyone,” Maximoff said mulishly. “Besides, it's better that we live so we can save more people.”
“So you’re okay with trading lives?” Stephen interjected smoothly.
“That isn’t what she said,” Rogers defended.
“She literally said just that,” Stephen said dryly.
“It’s true, though!” Wanda screeched.
“Uh, no it isn’t,” Tony said. “But it isn’t worth fighting about right now. I have other meetings, and letting you know was just a courtesy I should’ve left to the Council.”
Tony turned to leave at that, not noticing the cloud of red hanging above his head. Fortunately, Stephen did.
“Maximoff!” he shouted angrily. “Put away your damn magic! We don’t use it on teammates!”
Wanda huffed. “It’s not like it worked, anyway,” she said petulantly.
“That doesn’t excuse it,” Stephen replied gravely. “This will have consequences.”
“It was an accident,” Rogers said, placating. “She’s still learning control.”
“Then she’ll be sent to Kamar-Taj for training,” Stephen said with finality.
“You can’t separate us, she’s part of the team!”
“No,” Stephen said, baring his teeth in a semblance of a grin. “She’s a liability if she can’t control her powers. Would you deny her training? I imagine being in control would be so much better for her, would you deliberately keep that from her? Don’t you want what’s best for her?”
Rogers spluttered, trying to defend himself, but made no sense.
Stephen opened a portal to Kamar-Taj and Wong stepped out.
“Code red?” the Asian man asked.
Stephen nodded and walked to his boyfriend, who was detachedly watching the proceedings.
“You have a code for this?” Tony asked after a moment, watching Wong argue with Rogers and Maximoff.
“Of course I do,” Stephen huffed. “I have a code for everything. Remnants of my hospital days, you know. The ER has one for just about every situation, and I adopted most.”
“Even running out of coffee?”
“Code black, obviously. The whole Tower knows that one.”
“Your preparedness is kinda hot, if I’m being honest. Let’s get out of here,” Tony purred. “I can think of a few things you don’t have codes for.”
“You’re so weird ,” Stephen complained good-naturedly.
“But you love it.”
“Yeah, I do,” Stephen kissed Tony chastely.
“Sap!” shouted Wong from across the room.