Work Text:
The gala is the dullest damn thing he's been to in ages, but there's this creature, this vision, this Amazon, and she's in a slinky dress and he maneuvers his entourage so he can listen to her and her escort just long enough to figure out that a) they're planning something he probably ought to stop and b) they're only partners in the business sense. Then he ditches the entourage and asks her to dance without waiting for an introduction.
She smiles, but the lines he can see around her eyes stay un-wrinkled, and the eyes themselves seem to be saying that she really wants to break her champagne flute and grind the pieces into his eyes. Her partner is endlessly amused by the entire thing, and tries to push her, then she looks at him and he stops the pushing, although not the laughing.
She knows who he is even without the introduction, which proves she's got two brain cells to rub together, and she doesn't like him, which proves she's got a lot more than that. Tony likes her immediately, because she's drop-dead gorgeous and if it weren't for the fact that he's a fucking superhero she could probably kick his ass. She might still be able to kick his ass if he wasn't wearing the armor. He'd be interested in finding out, but on the list of things he'd like this woman to do that involve his ass, kicking it isn't very high.
"You realize," he says, as they're dancing, "I could update the security loophole you're intending to exploit in thirty seconds, and even if I couldn't -- which is purely hypothetical, because it'd probably be more like twenty-two -- I could get you both arrested in ten."
"Is that supposed to scare me?" she asks. She's relaxed, but she's clutching his hand fit to break it, which he's guessing is a threat but is really kind of hot, if painful.
"Just conversation," he answers. "I might consider not doing it if you're nice to me."
"Tony, sweetie," she tells him, "every second I'm not beating you with that plaque they gave you in appreciation is a second I'm being nice to you."
Tony doesn't call the cops. The org's president is only donating a fraction of the money, of course, with the majority of it going to fund the private police force he's got starving the laborers in the first place.
"Fancy meeting you here," he says instead, when they run back onto the ship to discover him with the president bound and gagged nearby.
"Cute," she says, then, "get your light-bright self off our damn ship."
He definitely likes her.