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Tony wanted to drown his troubles in another bottle of something expensive, but it was a combination of expensive bottles of alcohol that had landed him in his current mess in the first place. He slapped Logan’s hands off of him and curled up on the other side of the jet, shoving his sunglasses on and lowering all the blinds with the push of one button. Married in Vegas. Married officially in Vegas with no prenup and a ton of celebrity witnesses. Worse than that, they’d stayed in the Executive Suite at the Wynn. Everybody who was anybody knew what had happened and knew all the juicy details. Everyone except Tony.
To be fair, the whole day wasn’t a blank. He remembered going to Vegas to do some business and then some gambling. Tony could remember bits and pieces of the early part of his day. Not what he ate or drank, but his actions. He remembered coming up with some great idea somewhere in the middle of his umpteenth glass of Stoli, and after that everything was sort a blur.
How the hell had Pepper let this happen to him? She must have been the one to get him that California marriage license. She had just stood there witnessing him behave like an absolute idiot and done nothing about it. Not exactly new but she could have spoken up. She could have come up with some sort of response during the part of the ceremony where the priest said “If you know of any reason why those two guys should not get married speak now or forever hold your peace.”
Why had she held her peace? She definitely wasn’t holding it on the plane. All Pepper seemed to be doing was holding a grudge. She was angry with him, and she was sitting up front with the stewardesses thumbing through the tabloids. Doubtlessly, she was also probably starting to do some damage control because her brain, at least, didn’t seem to have an off-switch.
Logan chuckled faintly and moved to sit down next to him. “If I’d known you were gonna be like this the very next day, I would have turned you down flat.”
“Uh huh.”
“Okay, maybe not, but what I’m saying is you seemed happy about it before.”
“What I don’t get is how you failed to pick on the fact that I seemed drunk out of my mind.”
“You don’t even know how you seemed because you don’t remember.”
Tony opened his mouth to say something about who had the memory problems, but for one thing it was mean and for another, he was not going to start squabbling with Logan like… like a married couple.
He banged his head against the window pane next to him, sighing heavily when the mutant tugged him back over to him, kissing his neck.
“I think you need to just calm down and try to see the bright side.”
Tony made a face, but stayed put. “Which is?”
“I’m willing to stay with you in spite of all your issues. The way I see it, you wouldn’t be able to get away with it with any of the others. Cap would want to have an intervention, but I’m willing to tolerate your alcohol problem.”
He blinked, glancing over his shoulder and looking unimpressed by Logan’s logic. “That’s the bright side?”
“I think you’re just nervous. It’s a little late for cold feet though, baby, seeing as we’re already hitched.”
“I think you’re finding this way more amusing than I am. Baby.”
Logan just laughed and nuzzled his neck. Tony was pretty sure that was just to piss him off and make him uncomfortable as the stewardess headed back to see if they needed anything. What Tony needed was a leash. “This is our honeymoon, Stark. I’m supposed to be having a good time. You and Freckles are the ones acting like someone just killed your best friend.”
“I wish they’d killed me too.”
“I think you just need to drink less.”
“When I want your advice I’ll as—mmph.”
Making out for the remaining duration of the flight was all right and distracting, but the matching rings and the whole being married thing sorta ruined it.
-
After a few conference calls and business meetings, Tony finally was able to focus on his biggest problem in the privacy of his own office. “Get me out of this, Pepper. Get rid of him. I’m serious.”
She looked up from the pile of papers and gave him a look. “I can’t believe you’re even considering doing this.”
Tony took a sip from his coffee and grimaced. It was cold already, but he’d been distracted by all the work he had to do and all the cards he was being forced to personalize. “I’m not considering anything. I said I was serious. I don’t want to be married anymore. Make it happen.”
Pepper sighed carefully, leaning back and glancing back down at all the work she still had to contend with. “We talked about it. At least, I thought we did. I already explained to you about the money more than once.”
“That’s not a big deal though,” he argued. “Just give him money. Throw as much money at Logan as you have to. I don’t care. I have tons of it.”
“Well, maybe I should explain to you about the rest then.”
“The rest?”
“Well, I thought it was obvious.”
“What’s obvious?”
“You married a male mutant, Tony.”
“Gee, you think that could be why we’re having this conversation?”
Pepper tossed her clipboard onto the table. It made loud thud, but she didn’t seem to notice, focusing solely on him. “Just stop it. You know how this works and you know it’s a PR nightmare. People saw it. People are watching it right now on youtube. People are chatting about it all over the internet. There’s even magazine articles about your wedding cake in The Knot, and now you want to divorce him? Gay marriage just got legalized in this state, Tony.”
“So what?”
“So try connecting a few dots every once in awhile,” she snapped.
He rubbed his temples and slumped a little, eying his lukewarm coffee before moving the mug to one side as he remembered why the blue matte looked so familiar. It was from the new set of plates or cups or whatever the hell Peter and MJ had gotten him. “Just. Connect them for me. Please.”
“I’m saying this because you need to know this, Mr. Stark. You divorce him, and it makes you look like such an asshole that I’m not sure I can fix things this time. I’m not sure I can fix it now so don’t dig yourself into an even deeper hole now.”
He’d never really heard Pepper swear before, but she seemed too angry to care what he thought about it. He wasn’t actually sure he had time to think about it. “Can’t or won’t, Ms. Potts?”
“Both.”
“You’re supp—”
“Maybe you don’t care about how you end up looking, but what about the fact that it makes you look like you not only hate gay people but mutants too? That you somehow think it’s pretty funny that with enough money you can do whatever sort of elaborate joke you want and hurt whoever you want just to get a few laughs from your non-mutant heterosexual friends the next time you go out to play a round of golf with them. Not that you’d have any left after this.”
He didn’t bother pointing out just how few friends he had to begin with, because she was right. It would look pretty awful to divorce someone at the same time your secretary was forcing you to fill out ‘thank you’ cards for the ridiculous amount of wedding gifts he’d received. “That’s not how it will look.”
She sighed, rubbing her temples. “Even if somehow you’re right? What about the fact that you make James look like an idiot? To me that seems like a dangerous move although obviously not such a bad thing in terms of Stark Industries so much as your health and physical well-being.”
“Question,” Tony asked, raising his hand, which only earned him another glare. “James? Who is that and why do I care?”
“James Howlett. Hello? You married him?”
“Oh. Logan. Do you actually call him James?”
“Only when I’m mad at him.”
So basically Pepper only called Logan James. That was sort of hilarious. He smiled a bit, but Pepper didn’t so he sighed instead and leaned back in his chair. “Yeah, well, it’s too bad that he’ll look an idiot.”
“It’s not exactly a stretch in some respects,” she dryly admitted, “but it is the worst thing in the world to do to someone else. The absolute worst.”
He thought he should have been surprised that they’d finally found the worst thing he planned on doing, but he wasn’t. Tony did wish he cared a bit more though because he knew it wasn’t right. You didn’t just marry someone and ditch them the next day. Unless you were Britney Spears, and being lumped into the same category as her was sort of a great reason to keep Logan around.
That wasn’t what worried him though. The glare he was getting from the other end of the table was what worried him. It was a determined, forceful look and once Pepper made up her mind about something, he was usually screwed. “What?”
“So you end up looking like a jackass while he looks like a moron. But it doesn’t end there because if you do that? Having less money will be the least of your problems. I’ll quit working for you and good luck running the company on your own.”
She was right. Tony wouldn’t have less money if that happened, he’d wind up with no money at all. “What if I call your bluff?”
Pepper eyed him shrewdly before leaning forward and smiling grimly. “That’s the difference between you and me. I never ever bluff. Go ahead, Tony. Call me on it.”
Well, shit.
-
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” was the first thing Rhodes said. Steve said the same thing later on, and Tony actually felt bad until he remembered that there hadn’t really been much to even tell.
“You didn’t have to pretend to like all those women,” Rhodey had added, patting him on the shoulder and giving him the keys to some amazing one-of-a-kind something. Tony had been too distracted to pay much attention. “I am here for you, man, and that don’t ask, don’t tell thing doesn’t apply to you, okay? I hope he treats you right.”
Once they got to Stark Tower, Tony warned Logan that carrying him across the threshold would only result in him gnawing Logan’s hand off. To his credit, Logan let him walk inside himself, but the hand on his waist and being told he was really cute when he was feisty made Tony want to punch Wolverine in the face.
The only person who gave him a somewhat sympathetic look once they got inside was Carol, but then she drank as much as he did so maybe she knew. Carol also seemed to have a weird sixth sense about things like that. Tony tried not to look at her for too long after offering up a face and a shrug that amounted to him asking: “What can you do?”
“I’m perfectly fine with your alternative lifestyle,” Steve had quietly insisted, clasping Tony’s shoulder and giving him a warm hug. One of those rib-bruising hugs he was really fond of dishing out pretty much exclusively to Tony that was more like being mauled by a bear than anything else. Tony would have appreciated it more if it didn’t hurt so damn much, but he wasn’t sure he was meant to appreciate it. Maybe it was sort like a warning hug. A “Stop being an idiot for Pete’s sake and tell people things” hug.
In a louder tone of voice, Captain America added: “Even though it would have been nice to have been told ahead of time, Tony…”
There was a pause so people could laugh and Steve could fail to add ‘and Logan.’ As if Logan, being such a sensitive and caring soul full of an earnest desire to please and spread mirth throughout the ranks of the Avengers, would have sent out engraved invitations and singing telegrams to everyone announcing the wedding months in advance. Whatever.
“I wish you both all the happiness in the world.”
Which is when all the clapping had started and Tony glanced around at all the other Avengers, silently taking names and willing himself not to glare or throw up. How Steve could spout such bullshit with a straight face, he’d never know.
“I want to die,” he all but whined as Logan tugged him away from the head of the table. “Just kill me. I mean it. Pull out your claws and slice me up.” No one else could hear over the applause and loud congratulatory remarks.
“Think some happy thoughts, darlin’. Think about all the nice things you got for marrying me. All those nice things for the kitchen.” Tony scowled. “What about the car?”
“I do like the car, but you tell me to lighten up or calm down one more time and I’ll—” Logan kissed him. In front of everyone. All of whom seemed to think it was hilarious or sweet or some combination of the two. Someone even ‘aw’ed. In fact, someone ‘aw’ed really loudly. As if it wasn’t sad and shameful enough that someone thought their kiss was a precious moment in the making in the first place.
Christ, Tony needed a drink. He managed a smile and looked around for somewhere to sit neat to where Logan was currently sitting. After glancing around the room three times, he realized there weren’t a lot of free seats left –everyone had decided to show up to wish them well, even Bruce— and that Logan had come up with what everyone else would view as a sickeningly sweet gesture by offering to share the seat with him. In middle of debating what to do and making a disapproving face, Tony was interrupted by Logan kissing him again.
Tony tried to think of a charming way to protest sitting in his husband’s lap and since he couldn’t, he found himself forced to sit there. His hands balled up into fists under the table and Logan brushed a few fingers over his side before just kissing his cheek. He was sort of sick of that being the other man’s solution to everything, and he was going to have to talk—No, he didn’t want to talk. Tony wanted to kick him real bad. No discussion necessary. Just a swift kick to the balls, and he’d feel a lot better about the hellish second day of being married.
“Am I allowed to tell you to be optimistic?” Wolverine asked, not even making an effort to sound anything less than pleased and content.
“No, but you can and definitely ought to shut up.”
-
The worst part was going into a fight or combat situation. Now not only was Steve checking up on him every five seconds, so was Logan. He started seeing red the whole time they were finishing up the job, taking out most of Steve’s opponents and Logan’s instead of his own. In hindsight, this was the stupidest idea he could have ever come up with, and in the end, it only made them both that much more concerned about him.
Once they were back at the Tower, he tore off his helmet and chucked it at Wolverine’s head. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he growled out and everyone else was pretending not to notice or finding other places to be. “Pay more attention to what’s happening to you and let me look after myself. You’re going to get yourself injured looking out for me.”
Someone ‘aw’ed again and Tony turned around, eager to chuck another piece of armor at the sentimental sap, but Logan moved away from the wall and grabbed his arm to prevent him from doing so.
“You are killing me here! This isn’t Brokeback Mountain, you idiots. I’m actually just mad at him!”
“Okay, I’ll give you more space,” Logan insisted and Tony glanced at the other man’s hands, reminded of something he’d forgot about while dealing with the Doombots.
“And another thing,” Tony continued. “Not that I care, but what’s up with you not bothering to wear your ring?”
“I took it off so I didn’t wreck it whe— ” He was interrupted by another ‘aw.’ Logan frowned and sniffed a bit, probably trying to figure out who had made it. “That is really fucking annoying.”
“Hear that?” Tony asked the few stragglers left in the room. “Stop with the cutesy sound effects. The next person who ‘aw’es at us is getting permanently injured. …God, how gay is this?”
“It’s pretty gay,” Wolverine admitted before sighing. “Are you done looking for someone to fight with yet?”
“No, but that’s a good idea,” Tony said, pulling away from him and moving over to retrieve his helmet from Steve. “Thanks.”
“No problem. I’ll talk to Janet. Or Hank. I think it was one of them.” Then Captain America just smiled and left.
Dammit. Tony would have loved to get rid of Logan, but all that would result in is more people talking to Tony about how great it was to see him settling down and finding love with a mutant. “Let’s go spar.”
“Why? You need more training. Until then, I’m just gonna mop the deck with you same as always.”
“We’ll see.”
-
After a pointless session of sparring, they changed and as they started to leave the gym, Tony just shoved Logan up against a wall. He knew he was only doing it because Logan was letting him, but he was too angry to care. “I can’t do this.”
“You’re off to a decent start,” Logan murmured before leaning in to nibble at Tony’s ear. “You actually almost landed a few hits.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. You’re not helping,” he pointed out before pushing him back. “Look. Do you really want to be married?”
“Not exactly. Not at first, but it’s growing on me. Besides, I don’t see any way around it now. I thought we worked most of this out once you called and flew me out to Vegas, but apparently you were drunk as a skunk.”
Tony sighed heavily, remembering to breathe and to not get too bent out of shape. Yet. “I don’t get it, Logan. You don’t seem like an idiot.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“No, I mean it. Why would you listen to me? Did I make some kind of compelling argument?”
“Several. You acted like you always do. Maybe a little more manic at times, but I chalked that up to you being all caught up on thinking you were being clever.”
“I do that a lot,” Tony had to admit.
“Try all the time,” he wryly pointed out. “You made me an offer I couldn’t pass up. I was kind of curious. I wanted to see what was going to happen.”
“If your curiosity is finally satisfied, we could just end this right now if you’d divorce me."
“Pepper already pointed out the money situation and pretty much all the other repercussions, right? Even if that wasn’t a factor, I made vows. In front of a priest and about eighteen Elvises.”
“I think it’s called Elvii. Anyway, come on, Logan. Don’t go all cowboy-samurai on me. You made vows but…”
“I don’t make vows unless I plan on honoring them, Tony. Besides, I kind of like having money, a nice house and a hot secretary. Not to mention a whole fleet of cars.”
“You could have most of those things anyway.”
“The bottom line, Tony, is that I didn’t say all that stupid nonsense in front of a bunch of other people just so I could look like a fool two days later.”
“Even if I don’t remember what you said? I don’t even remember what I said, Logan.”
“There’s a video. Watch it.”
Tony pulled away and frowned. “Whatever.”
Logan pulled him back, reversing their position and sticking his face directly into Tony’s. “Just so we’re clear, I don’t appreciate looking stupid anymore than you do,” he replied, growling a little and sounding dangerous. “There’s worse things in the world than being stuck with me. I can think of at least six off the top of my head.”
Six meaning those claw things, but he was a little caught up on the whole growling thing. Tony figured he more than looked like an idiot since that didn’t trouble him as much as it turned him on. “Oh.”
Logan held him there with one hand, pulling a gold band out of the pocket of his pants before slipping it back on. “I get that this is hard for you, but you’ll adjust. It’s not so bad.”
“Yeah,” he mumbled tugging on Logan’s shirt, eying the snap buttons before getting a few of them out of his way. “Could be worse.”
He tried kissing him, but Logan just pulled back giving him this strange, patient look that Tony couldn’t quite figure out. “Are we done then? Fighting, I mean.”
“For now. I guess we could take a break.”
“Sounds good,” Logan murmured, but what he ended up doing was letting go of Tony and stalking away.
-
After a day or two of playing nice while simultaneously having a harder time getting Logan to so much as talk to him, Tony tried locking himself in the basement. It seemed like a great plan and for a few hours it actually was, until Wolverine wandered in. Apparently Pepper had given Logan the access codes.
“I’m this close to firing her,” he pointed out, rolling his chair away when the mutant moved over to him.
Dummy made a cheerful squeaking noise that Tony had never heard before and Logan set his fedora down top of what was sort of the robot’s head before wandering over to check out Tony’s bikes. Their bikes now. God, he hated this. “You gonna to fire her for doing her job?” he asked.
“Last time I checked I don’t pay her to open a bank account for you or give you all kinds of financial advice when it comes to investing my money into stocks. James.”
“Just so we’re clear, she’s the only one I’m willing to let call me that. I don’t like it much. I don’t remember him.”
“Sorry,” Tony mumbled, surprised to find he meant it. “Her real name’s Virginia.”
“I’m not calling her that,” the other man muttered as if her proper name was some kind of insult. “You shouldn’t get mad at her. She liked doing that. She likes numbers. She does pretty much everything you need doing, and she’s pretty upset. Cut her some slack,” Logan insisted, continuing to circle around the room. It made Tony a little dizzy and nervous.
“Call her whatever you want, I don’t pay her to hang out with you. And if she needs help she’ll ask for it. Stop opening doors for her. It’s annoying.”
“Wouldn’t kill you to be more courteous. She runs your business. She shouldn’t have to carry your groceries inside too.”
“Can we stop talking about your new best friend now? What’s with you wearing a hat and coat inside anyway?”
Logan raised an eyebrow and smirked. “You should make a list of rules or something.”
“When in doubt, assume you’re doing everything wrong.”
“I think I’ll also assume you’re drunk half the time and save myself a little trouble in the long-run.”
“Jackass.”
“Lightweight.”
Tony glared at him, but all Logan did was smirk so eventually he looked back down at the gears he’d been tinkering with before shrugging. “Are you going to explain it or not?”
The mutant snorted before crossing his arms.
“What?”
“You sure you don’t have Alzheimer’s? We’re going on a trip.”
Tony looked back up. “I’m pretty sure I can do whatever I want and I don’t want to go anywhere. We talked about this.”
“I got no issues with you doing your own thing,” Wolverine murmured, spreading his hands out in a placating fashion. “You’re more than welcome to do whatever you want and you know it. But we’re supposed to get meet my people, remember?”
Tony frowned, going over to Jarvis and pulling up his schedule. “Oh. Right.” He’d agreed to go visit all the mutants at Xanadu or Chateau d’Xavier or whatever. For the whole weekend? Dammit. “Any chance of you going without me?”
“No,” Logan murmured without even looking at him. He was running his hands over the hood of one of the restored cars in the far corner of the room.
Tony wasn’t sure what to make of that. Normally he didn’t get a lot of personal space, and actually he’d gotten sort of used to it. “Why?”
The mutant rubbed the back of his neck and crouched down to inspect the tires. “First of all, I dealt with hanging out with all your loser celebrity friends for the last few days. Second of all, we’re living where you want to live so I have to get my stuff and figure out what I’m doing.”
“That’s true.” Why did he have a feeling this conversation was going to end with him feeling like shit?
“You’d have to go anyway, Tony. I hate to break it to you but this early in the game it might look a little strange to people if I start going places without you,” Logan added, pausing to shake his head before getting back to his feet. “Hell, with the way you’re carrying on, I don’t trust you not to lock me out of the house completely if I go anywhere at all.”
Oh good. It won’t end that way. I feel like shit already. “Oh come on. I won’t lock you out of the house. It’s just a lot to deal with.”
“Yeah. I guess I wouldn’t know what that was like,” Logan wryly muttered.
Right. Because there were two of them in this and while he had drunken amnesia to fall back on, Wolverine didn’t. He sighed thinking back to his last conversation with Pepper a few days ago.
Tony was going to have to make this work and it was going to be a lot easier if he didn’t make Logan completely miserable. Sure, it would get him the divorce he wanted, but he was pretty sure that being a superhero meant not being a douchebag. And with great power yadda yadda.
Since he couldn’t get the mutant to come to him, he wandered over to Logan and lightly brushed a few fingers over his sideburns. “You know, you could maybe tell me when you think I’m acting like an idiot instead of avoiding me.”
Logan considered him briefly before managing a small smirk before tugging him closer and kissing his neck. “Avoiding’s easier. That’s a lot of telling.”
“You’d probably get laryngitis,” Tony teased, making short work of Logan’s leather jacket before dealing with the collared shirt and wife-beater underneath it. “I’ll make you a set of flashcards to hold up. Green can mean continue and red can mean switch topics.”
The mutant chuckled, not stopping him and leaning back against the door of the car directly behind them. “You know we’re still going to New York, right?”
“I know. We will, honest. The thing is I’m never on time for anything so… you wanna?”
And, being Logan, of course he did.
Later on, when he was bent over the hood of a Bugatti Veyron, Tony thought that maybe there were some vague benefits to being married.
-
After a few minutes of keen observation, Tony concluded that team X-men was fairly disorganized and irritating despite being very well-funded. He wasn’t sure why Logan had bothered living with them to begin with. Nowhere else to go maybe? It seemed like a better answer than him enjoying their company.
Most of them were nice though in spite of being sort of lame. Summers, Cyclops, Slim or whatever his name was, leaned against the wall the whole time. Probably thinking he was all that in his hideous red sunglasses. How hard could having lasers be? Wasn’t it better than being deformed or blue?
But Tony doubted that was why Scott was standing there, crossing his arms and scowling a lot. Stupid bastard. He couldn’t have had any idea how responsible he was for Tony’s sudden interest in draping himself all over Logan. That and it was driving Wolverine crazy. And not in a good way either. It was the little petty things in life that made it all worthwhile.
The tour was nice even if he really worried about being surrounded by telepaths because most of his thoughts weren’t pure and even the ones that weren’t completely R-rated were probably inappropriate. He liked learning a bit more about Logan, especially the vaguely humiliating stories and it was good to know that Wolverine had some experience with engines and repair work. Turned out he did a lot of work on the RS-150 Blackbird or X-jet or whatever they were calling it. How they even had one, he didn’t know, but he wanted to learn more about it and the cloaking system installed so he sort of ditched Logan to spend more time with it.
Somehow this lead to him being asked to visit some of the students, and he grimaced at first, but he figured it wouldn’t be that bad. And it wasn’t. They were a cute bunch despite the fact that some of them looking like baby closet monsters. It also seemed to Tony that having a Blackbird plus having a bunch of bored teenagers clearly equaled shopping trip. He said as much on the note he’d left in one of the classrooms before rounding some of them up and heading out despite some feeble protests from the older mutants.
“It’s not like they have cancer and it’s not like they’ll get hurt. They need fresh air and Rock Band,” he’d insisted and most of them were inclined to agree. Or come with.
The nice thing about money is you could pay people getting minimum wage to be nice to people they’d never normally be nice to. Which was how he ended up wandering around Toys R Us with a furry girl named Meggan on his shoulder and buying every other teenager with him a Wii.
Cyclops was, of course, waiting for him in the docking bay and looking completely unimpressed.
“See, that’s why no one brought you back anything,” Tony pointed out.
“They’re here to learn.”
“They’re also here to get to have lives, right? A vaguely normal life. You’re not against mutants having lives, are you?”
“Just don’t expect me to clap or bow or shake your hand.”
“There’d have been cheaper ways to get you to do that,” Tony assured him before walking away.
-
Maybe the actual worst part of having someone else constantly in your life was you knew you’d end up sleeping with them every night. The sex was great, but it was the sleeping that bothered Tony. The noticeable absence when the other person got up. He could tell when Logan left even without wanting to. It sucked too. After sleeping with the other man on and off every so often to then sleeping with him regularly, Tony had gotten used to grudgingly accepting having a somewhat hairy arm wrapped around him. With that gone, he ended up lying there and wishing it would come back.
“I do not think you are being fair, Scott” was the first thing he heard as he ventured out to the hallway. He couldn’t see the person saying it but it was obviously the blue furry German. The bamf-y sound meant that he’d left. Tony was learning all about mutants. Not that he cared much.
“It just seems stupid and not at all like you.” Party Pooper seemed like a better name for Summers than Cyclops. “Like a joke.”
“Why is my being married a joke?”
“You marry some billionaire in Vegas. What about that isn’t a joke? Besides, he seems awfully fake to me.”
It was a hell of a thing being judged by a cardboard cutout. Tony didn’t mind being told he was two-dimensional by most people, but being called out on being superficial by old Laser-eye was just sort of annoying. Especially at three in the morning.
Logan snorted. “Yeah. I can see where buying the kids a shitload of stuff would make you think he’s a shallow dickhead.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Then tell me what you mean because all I’ve heard so far is you directly insulting Stark and indirectly insulting me.”
“That stunt he pulled today with the kids. Was that supposed to impress me? Or the rest of us?”
“I think it’s more like he had a credit card, kids without Guitar Hero, and access to a Blackbird running on Shi’ar technology.”
“Tony has no idea what they’re like and he doesn’t know what they are dealing with. He doesn’t know about their powers. He doesn’t know how we’re treated by people and —”
“They’re kids, Slim. Kids are the same everywhere you go. And I think you ought to just ‘fess up to it. The problem is you don’t like that they like him.”
“Well, why should they? He just shows up and suddenly he’s like everyone’s special uncle. I don’t want to see these kids get hurt because of him.”
“Even if he never comes back over here to play Mario Kart with them, you think the kids will mind? You think they care if he’s human or fake or irresponsible? I doubt it. If you want to feel better about yourself, okay, you’re right about two out of three of those things, but you’re really wrong about the other. He’s not fake.”
“He paid people to look the other way when he brought the kids into stores.”
“Well, fuck, Scott what did you want him to do?”
“Personally,” Tony murmured, heading down the hall. “What he would like to do is sleep.”
“I bet you would,” Logan said with a small smirk before glancing back over at Scott.
“You knew he was there?”
“Hard not to.”
Scott just stared at them before wandering off.
Tony rolled his eyes before frowning a little, too tired to mind that Logan was tugging him in the opposite direction. He might have wanted an apology or to give Summers a black-eye, but he was kind of tired. “Wait. Just then… Were you implying that I smell?”
“Everyone smells like something.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“You’re not getting one,” Logan assured him before pressing up against the door and kissing him. Tony kissed back, willing to be distracted and deciding he’d have to ask Pepper. For kicks. “I don’t just have a good nose, you know. I can hear your heartbeats, darlin’. You’re also the least subtle person in the mansion.”
“I think we all know who the biggest jackass is,” was Tony’s wry reply.
“So. You wanna go to sleep then?” Logan asked, moving them both back so he could open the door. “Or you wanna do something else?” He lingered inside the threshold giving Tony a fairly thoughtful, vaguely eager look.
Honestly, Tony still wasn’t sure how he felt about marriage. He figured anyone stupid enough to decide to do it should be allowed to and clearly he was just as stupid as anyone else since he was. Commitment was pretty terrifying, but it wasn’t like either one of them were using that word. Or other words yet. Maybe they wouldn’t, maybe they would. It didn’t matter.
The sex was pretty fantastic and he was pretty sure threesomes wouldn’t be completely out of the picture considering Logan liked women too. Besides, the thought of ever having to explain to Steve and Rhodey or the other Avengers worried him more than a little. Janet and Hank would kill him and then take back their pots and pans. Then Pepper would reanimate his corpse and kill him again because she apparently she really liked cooking with those things back at her apartment.
“I’m not tired anymore,” he decided. “Let’s do something else.”