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darsynia · 4 days
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New Chapter Jurassic World: Slowly - Soulmates AU Things Aren't Always As They Seem
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Plot: Nic Forester doesn’t have a soulmark. Her whole life people have teased and bullied her over it. But when she lands her dream job at Jurassic World, she thinks all of that’s behind her - especially since she lies to her co-workers about having a soulmark.
When she finally gets her soulmark thanks to Owen Grady’s touch, she almost wishes she hadn't. Owen’s very vocal about his disappointment and she storms off, avoiding him as much as possible from then on.
Until the Indominus escapes.
Things Aren't Always As They Seem: In which Owen's starting to realise maybe Nic's not mousy.
Pairings: Owen Grady x Nic Forester (OC) Claire Dearing x Eric Forester (OC)
Rated: Mature
Warnings: Swearing, Dinos Eating People, Character Death
Links: AO3 Wattpad
Tagging: @munstysmind @asirensrage @arrthurpendragon @bi-ologistofthehills @mrsmungus @ocappreciationtag @bardic-tales @chickensarentcheap @dream-beyond-the-fantasy @thatmagickjuju @thebejeweledwatercat @kingsmakers @curiousdamage
Please let me know if you'd like to be added to or removed from the taglist :)
Please leave a comment here or over on AO3/Wattpad! And as always, please reblog!
Preview:
Snapped trees, massive dinosaur tracks, relatively tiny human tracks, and bits of blood Owen didn’t bother to point out all led them to the river. A river that seemed to end in a waterfall. The tracks didn’t resume on the other side of the water, so Owen had to assume whoever it was had jumped.
“Oh god,” Claire breathed behind him.
“We need to find a way down there,” Owen said.
“Eric!” It wasn’t quite calling out for him, but it was a little too loud, all things considered.
Owen spun quickly and put a hand over Nic’s mouth. “Shh!”
“I’m not one of the raptors,” she hissed, slapping his hand away. “The clicker comment was sarcasm!”
The more time he spent with her, the more he thought his impression she was mousy was spectacularly incorrect. Shaking off his surprise, he hissed back, “Do you not remember what happened at the paddock earlier?”
Nic held up a piece of plaid cloth and it took him a minute to recognize it as having been ripped from a shirt. “This is Eric’s!”
Somewhat sobered by her words, he gently took the fabric from her and turned it over in his hands. “No blood.”
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darsynia · 10 days
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My husband did something yesterday that was written about in PC Gamer (among others) and I am just so proud! He's more of a BNF than I could ever aspire to be.
explanation: my husband has, with permission from Bungie and with a team of other fans of the game, ported a trilogy of games from the mid-90s to multiple platforms and helped keep it alive for its many fans for over two decades. That hard work culminated in the opportunity to spearhead posting the game(s) on Steam (with enthusiastic permission) so that more players can enjoy it.
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darsynia · 12 days
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Quick message; I had somewhat of a chaotic start to the year, but ironically some of it is back in focus now that a small cataract has been detected in one eye.
I kept finding it hard to focus on writing, thought it might be from needing glasses, and finally made an appointment.
Turns out I do need glasses, but the cataract is definitely the more obvious issue. Unfortunately, it is too small to be operable, so I have a stretch of months to years of this until it can be removed. It's demoralizing, to be honest.
Glasses will be ready next week, and hopefully I can hit the ground running. Reading of any kind has been annoying at best and difficult/distressing at worst, so having answers is good!
I missed my birthday and the Ides, out of simple avoidance of the frustration reading with a sense of 'catching up' gives. Miss you all, hugs!
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darsynia · 16 days
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🗡️
(in case you need a knife in the next two days for reasons unrelated to political assassinations)
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darsynia · 2 months
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To bring you back to us:
Christy and Neil - pick one (i couldn't choose)?
10 ...desperately
12 ...in grief.
26 ...as an apology
Please and thank you!
Sneaky sneaky, I like it! I touched on all three, but the grief is wrapped up before the kiss. I'd been struggling feeling like my icky holidays had nuked my ability to write on my longfic of these two, and this did help me feel better about that!
TERMS OF SURRENDER
Pairing: Christy Huddleston/Neil MacNeil Length: 2,358 Rating: General audiences Summary: (set during 'Green Apples,' in a universe that mixes the book and the series)
Neil thinks about the loss of his wife and child as he listens to the harmonica's gently hopeful tune of healing. He decides it's finally time to let go of the past and fight for the kind of future his feelings for Christy promise.
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Terms of Surrender
The sound of a harmonica was one of the things Neil had missed in Scotland. It hadn’t occurred to him to bring one, but even if he’d had the funds, there wasn’t anywhere to play it that didn’t feel awkward and out of place. Truthfully, he had felt awkward and out of place, but his time spent quietly observing and learning at home had been quite useful abroad. Neil had integrated well, so well that he’d come home more Scots than Cove.
That thought made him think of Christy. As an outsider, her approach had been wildly different from his; where he’d stepped back and sought a niche, she’d charged ahead to forge her own. He couldn’t help but admire her spirit. Neil had come home changed, but Christy had changed his home. Without permission and without vitriol she’d gently but firmly established herself in Cutter Gap as someone with a heart twice as big as her stature, cheerfully taking the good with the bad. If he’d known then what he knew now, he’d have held himself back, been more… guarded around her.
As with so many of the important things in his life, Neil had realized this too late.
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That realization was made all the more complicated on a day such as this, as they fought back a disease that threatened to take the lives of children he’d helped bring into the world. There was only so far a man could push away thoughts of the lives he couldn’t save, to say nothing of the apologies he’d held back until he was out of time.
That old familiar guilt struck a discordant chord with the mournful harmonica, enough to force a rueful chuckle from his lips. After all, he owed an apology to Christy, and this time he didn’t have the luxury of locking himself away until his reflection looked different enough to forget the needful.
Neil stood slowly, loath to disturb the delicate tableau of hopeful survival going on in the quarantine room. He remembered seeing Christy step out of the building looking distressed, but given his contribution to that expression, he’d focused intently on his notes in hopes that she’d avoid disturbing him.
Margaret would have called him a coward. “Apologize or don’t, Mac, but don’t pretend you’re taking the high road!”
His late wife’s admonition spurred Neil to walk around the schoolhouse, his steps curving him away from some hard truths and toward others. She’d hated the darkness of the mountains and loathed the quiet that seeped into a person’s bones to linger there. In a sense, loving him had dimmed Margaret’s fiercely fragile light until she’d run out of energy to fight off the disease that killed her. There was no making peace with that. 
He shut his eyes and tipped his head into the light breeze to clear his mind. When he opened them again, Neil saw the dim outline of a figure ahead of him, along the treeline where they’d been collecting firewood. It was Christy. The lanterns leading to the outhouse were just bright enough to see that her fists were clenched at her sides, and her head was tipped back, just as he’d just done.
“There’s solitary, and then there’s lonely. You can be lonely without being alone.”
Those words had haunted him since his wife had said them less than a month before her death. They’d sliced like a scalpel those first months, festered like a wound that refused to heal by a year’s time, before finally burrowing down to ache like a mended bone before a storm. Tonight was the first time he’d seen them as anything but hurtful; his wife had been many things (selfish, sensual, miserable, mesmerizing), but she had always been insightful. How had it taken him this long to realize what she’d really meant? That they could have been solitary together. That Margaret hadn’t needed to be lonely, if he’d been able to teach her how to share his solitude.
Neil stood in the silent shadow of the schoolhouse, his thoughts whipping around like a willow in a windstorm. There was a very clear reason why he was thinking of Margaret right now, and the truth of that scared him. It was the last clammy fear before the fever broke, the surge of adrenaline before closing a wound. He was letting her go, making space.
The thought was as presumptuous as it was intimidating.
“The apology, Mac. Don’t be an ass.”
Neil walked toward Christy slowly, shoring up his mental fortifications for the coming conflict.
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“Battling it out with your god, are you?”
Christy shot him a look that he couldn’t discern in the half-light. “No need to poke fun, but yes. I don’t need to part the Red Sea, just pray hard enough for God to pass over this building without taking anyone.”
“Now who’s poking fun?” Neil said. He moved to stand beside her, both facing the fathomless expanse of forest. “I’ve always thought that story was particularly unfair; punishing the children for the sins of the fathers.”
“That’s not too different from feuding, don’t you think?” There was a tightness in her voice that was entirely his fault, top to bottom.
“Maybe I should walk away and start over,” he said, shoving at a small branch with his foot. “I’d come over here to apologize.”
Her silence lasted long enough for him to look over. Christy’s body language was armed for war, but her words were more shield than sword.
“You couldn’t have known about my sister. I’m a stranger, and it looked like I put your patients in danger.”
“You’re hardly a stranger, Christy. Despite my temper, I know you’ve only ever done your best to keep them safe, educated, and happy,” he countered. “I was wrong to shout at you.”
“You--” she broke off, arms dropping to her sides. 
“What? Did I just deprive you of a fight? I’m sure we can find something else,” Neil teased lightly. He opened his mouth to elaborate, but Christy jumped in to interrupt.
“Don’t! Let me savor the moment.”
The amusement in her voice cut straight through to the depths of his heart, as though his years of defenses and baggage were insubstantial in the face of her warmth. 
Christy turned to walk back toward the schoolhouse, and it was in the shock of those feelings that Neil caught her as she pitched sideways toward him, hissing in surprised pain. Immediately he set her hand on his shoulder and knelt down, finding her boot tangled in the ends of the branch he’d nudged earlier. That realization had him swearing under his breath.
“Is it bad? My ankle doesn’t feel--” Christy cut herself off, her voice pinched with fear.
“I was reacting to the culprit, not your injury. I’d tried to kick that branch out of the way. You’ll be fine after a few minutes, it’s just a wrong step.”
“So you swept me off my feet?” she whispered, finishing the sentence just as he straightened back up. The action slid her hand from his shoulder down to his chest-- and they stood with her words hovering between them like a heated breath in the deepest winter.
The lamplight lit her stress-mussed hair in soft gold, edging her features as if she were in an illuminated manuscript. Christy’s eyes were wide as she stared at her hand on his chest, perhaps as shocked as he was that she hadn’t pulled back. Just at that moment, a curl slipped free, and before he realized what he was doing, Neil tucked the soft lock behind her ear in an unmistakable caress.
The sound of her sucked-in breath shot adrenaline straight to his heart.
“I should--” she started, eyes still fixed on their point of contact. With the barest stroke of her thumb, she finally lifted her hand. “I should go. Will you promise to get some rest? I’ll take the first watch.”
The blood rushing in his ears spoke of the many things unresolved between them, and Neil reached out to stop her with a clumsy hand. “Wait--”
Christy pressed her eyes shut, her lip caught in her teeth. He longed to see the nuances of her expression-- was she annoyed but hiding it well? Blushing? Fearful?
“Hold still for a spell, let your ankle rest?” he offered. He didn’t move his hand, and she didn’t move away to dislodge it. For once, he didn’t hear the derisive tones of his conscience mocking those choices. Christy was hesitating, so he added, “I haven’t properly apologized.”
This prompted her to open her eyes and look at him. Whatever she saw there made her sway just slightly in his direction.
Maybe it was the stillness of the night, the hope of healing, the exhaustion from fighting so many things with so much of his strength, or perhaps it was the lightness of his finally untethered heart, but whatever the true reason was, Neil succumbed.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to see you for who you truly are, Christy. Your heart is bright enough to light the whole Cove, and I’m grateful to be touched by it.” He released her arm and turned his hand to brush the backs of his fingers against her cheek, then moved to walk away before he ruined both of their reputations.
Christy stopped him, not with words, but with an action that meant so much more: with surprising strength, she caught his hand, pressing his palm to her cheek. Then she did speak, and he was lost.
“You’re the coal that keeps us burning, Neil.”
The distant sound of the harmonica faded in the space between her action and his stuttering heart. Would John Spencer tuck the instrument into his pocket and make his way to the outhouse? Had he been interrupted by one of the children crying out for their help?
Stepping close, Neil set his other hand on her cheek and said, “I owe you more than an apology, Christy, even more so for this.” Dipping his head, he kissed her, meaning for it to be brief, a promise, not an end unto itself. He was foolish, forgetting her determination to never yield when she could persuade instead. Her hand moved up into his hair, burning a surer path than any bullet meant to stop his brain from functioning.
Despite every passing second marking the time between now and disaster if he didn’t pull back, Neil deepened the kiss, his arm banding around her waist to lift her up, ever so slightly. Then, with the reluctance of a victor forced to leave the spoils of war behind, he stepped away. His whole body buzzed with anxiety and pleasure, but he knew he’d overstepped badly.
“Forgive me, I-- I’ve held that back for quite some time,” he admitted. “When you brought me dinner, I must confess--”
“Oh! Please believe me, I had no idea, or I would never have presumed to take advantage like that.” Christy interrupted, her voice thick with regret. “Fairlight suggested the way to persuade you was through good cooked food. I suppose I failed there, as well!”
Neil took her hand and clasped it with both of his. “Your campaign for Dan Scott had me at your feet. When I realized that was all you’d come for, I was ready to send him to the devil, and the Mission too. The truth is, I’ve fallen for you, Christy. Hopelessly so.”
She lifted their joined hands to her lips. “I’d barely let myself think of such things, but when I dream… you’re always there, smiling at me, quarreling with me, teaching me--”
“Reality is hardly ever that idyllic,” he cautioned. Neil dislodged his hand from hers out of propriety, but inwardly his defenses were being dismantled, one uncertainty at a time.
“Only you would consider arguing with me idyllic!”
“Any time spent with you is a dream, I’ll freely admit that.” He grinned, adding, “If ye wish to prove it’s real, we can go on until I win an argument. Shouldn’t take too long.”
“You are insufferable,” Christy grumbled.
“Would it make it worse if I told you how lovely you look when you’re cross with me? It was all I could do not to--
“If you say something about sweeping me off my feet, Neil MacNeil, I’ll--” She stopped short, clearly realizing that he’d prompted exactly the kind of cross reaction he enjoyed.
“Do I need to?” Neil started, but a bobbing lantern light near the schoolhouse caught his attention. Thinking quickly, he moved to pick up some of the cut wood and branches near where they’d been standing, nodding to Christy to do the same. By the time Fairlight made it around the corner, the two of them were almost to the outhouse.
“Doc find you screamin’ at the sky, then?”
“Bargaining, more like,” Neil said. “I think it ended on a truce?” He turned toward her, selfishly needing to see her indignation.
Once again, she bested him.
“Victory,” Christy asserted. “I had a talk with God, and he sent me a sign of healing.”
Neil angled his arms so that a small log fell off, allowing him to hide his expression as he picked it back up. Thankfully, the two women had resumed their walk back to the front of the schoolhouse by the time he stood up. Healing! Her innocent audacity took his breath away, as always. There was a lot of rebuilding to be done, all of it in the harsh light of day, but he was intensely grateful for that temporary bubble of solitude they’d been able to find in each other.
The thought had occurred before the significance dawned on him, and Neil stopped short, stunned.
Healing. It was something he’d fought to achieve for others his entire life yet somehow was gifted without warning or design, in the middle of the night during quarantine, no less! This new beginning was fitting, he supposed, and like all beginnings, there would be a lot of adjusting to be done for both of them. 
They’d be able to do it together.
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darsynia · 2 months
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Hi @darsynia! It was such fun reading "In Search of a Fairy Tale" for the OC Fanfic Review Exchange! Your Tony is always so well-layered and fantastically written, and the OC for the story was truly up to the challenge of being paired with Mr. Stark. I know it was a two-parter, but it leaves you wondering "What if?" at the end! Fantastic read!
#oc fanfic review exchange
Thank you so very much! It's a short story but I really am proud of it--I consider it a 'distilled essence of Tony Stark,' hehe.
In the Details is, as it always has been, a delight. There are so many disparate threads to weave, not only Kari's character and her backstory, what she can do, what she cares about, but also the dozens of characters in the world of the MCU that interact with her! Through it all she still feels powerful yet vulnerable, has knowledge that makes sense--and mysteries to uncover. I'm glad I've met you on here and happy to have a chance to read it!
Overall, though my stories were clearly not what people were looking for, I'm still glad I participated. I ended up reading at least 8 different stories and left over 45 reviews. What I most wanted to do was encourage other writers by showing them what I enjoyed, telling them my favorite lines and plot developments, and overall for each author to be happy to see my name in their inbox. Hopefully I've done that!
Thank you again my dear!
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darsynia · 2 months
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Whew!
Husband and 2 youngest have Covid but are at this point asymptomatic... but the school nurse initially misinterpreted the guidelines and expected them to stay home for another 6 days >< That was a really stressful half hour! I appreciate her professionalism though. We sorted it out, but at one point she said I'd come to take the kids home on Friday, but there was no school Thursday or Friday!
There are some people in positions of power who could have felt embarrassed and doubled down or sought to create issues for us because we pointed that out. I'm very grateful that this is not the case!
I'm frazzled AF but hopefully things will be back to normal (but in masks and separate rooms for another few days) soon!
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darsynia · 2 months
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Send me a Ship and a Number and I will Write a Kiss
…good morning.
…goodnight.
…goodbye.
…where it hurts.
…where it doesn’t hurt.
…on a falling tear.
…to shut them up.
…in secrecy.
…in public.
…desperately.
…in joy.
…in grief.
…discreetly.
…casually.
…passionately.
…lazily.
…to distract.
…as encouragement.
…for luck.
…on a scar.
…on a place of insecurity.
…in a rush of adrenaline.
…in relief.
…in danger.
…as a ‘yes’.
…as an apology.
…as a suggestion.
…as a lie.
…as a promise.
…as comfort.
…after a small rejection.
…to wake up.
…forcefully.
…to pretend.
…to gain something.
…to give up control.
…without a motive.
…because they’re running out of time.
…because time’s run out.
…because the world is ending.
…because the world is saved.
…out of pride.
…out of greed.
…out of lust.
…out of anger.
…out of envy or jealousy.
…out of spite.
…out of habit.
…out of necessity.
…out of love.
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darsynia · 2 months
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Yes, I made Tony Stark in Diablo IV...
...and no, I'm not sorry!
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darsynia · 2 months
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Fam went to an event last Sunday, Mr. Darsy tested positive for Covid Wednesday, after feeling a bit icky before bed. I had sent kids to school with masks just in case and warned the school nurse after testing him when he woke up late. 1 had a half day already, other 2 came home early not feeling well! Everyone's quarantined in bedrooms and the finished basement, and I'm on feeding everyone duty in the living room/kitchen middle floor.
By some miracle the kids already had today and tomorrow off, but they're understandably lonely and unhappy to be stuck in their respective spaces! I ordered some treats to make up for it for everyone.
I got all emotional in front of my oldest about wanting to make everything as easy as possible for my husband, who back in 2016 dropped nearly everything and worked half-time for 3 months when I had a catastrophic leg break (while the kids were 2, 4, and 7). I will be an old lady who cries when my kids say hi, I think! He's never been a big baby when he's sick, he keeps apologizing for the inconvenience and saying he really hopes I don't catch it (I caught it in late 2022 and was laid out, he's getting there).
Just wanted to make a little 'here's what's up' both for me, for you, and for future me when I look back at it! Hugs and love <3
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darsynia · 2 months
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I have a bit of an arm injury right now that makes extended typing painful, and it's taking forever to heal (pulled a muscle and man, I am no action hero to shrug this shit off), but one thing I could do was clear out my email! I am one of those weirdos with a bunch of unread marketing BS emails clogging up my unreads, heh.
In the end, this was my delete tally (the blue is the progress bar for the 'yet to be deleted' queue):
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Turned out to be 2/3 of my archive, which stretches back to 2003.
Besides the goofy emails my husband and I sent each other in the time before imessage, my favorite email discovery today was the tally of kudos emails. I know there are absolutely people with more of these, but I was just tickled by this:
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That's just over 7 years of once-a-day kudos emails! I've had an AO3 account for 5172 days and loved every single second of it. Thanks to everyone who's ever read anything of mine, double thanks for hitting that kudos, and my eternal thanks for those lovely souls who've told me what they think! After clearing out the marketing and unnecessary emails, my inbox is almost all fanfic notifs because I hoard them like a weird dragon and I wouldn't have it any other way.
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darsynia · 2 months
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Saw this image on Reddit and had to put my own text on it when I realized how well the math works out:
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darsynia · 2 months
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*clasps hands* oh, thank you!! Yes to everything you say here, this especially:
he is, underneath it all, the man looking to find someone in this world to care about him for who he is and not just because of what he builds.
There's a longfic of mine (Iron Helix, I should post more chapters of it on here, whoops!) that I know a lot of folks don't have time to read, but it illustrates this perfectly. If you'll indulge me, here's the excerpt that your lovely words made me think of, and thank you! POV character is my OC, Evie.
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“After I got back from Afghanistan, I spent a lot of time with strangers. Doctors. Board members. Women.” He paused for what felt like a long time. “All of them were obsessed with the ARC reactor. Sometimes I wondered if any of the women cared whether they were having sex with me, as long as they got some time to touch it, stare at it, ask me questions about it. I was incidental. A new normal.” He let out a heavy breath, and she brushed comfort across his hand with her thumb. Tony lifted their joined hands and kissed the back of hers. “It took sometimes five, six times before they’d look at my face first. I usually didn’t bother.”
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Thank you so much for reading, I value your opinion quite highly so it's a rush! Forgive me for sharing this excerpt but it's just... what I think of when I think of Tony looking for someone to see HIM, not just what he can do. Gotta love Tony Stark managing to make being a genius playboy sound lonely!
I have such a backlog of chapters and stories in my head but I definitely have one floating there of Tony managing to be a busy, delightfully distracted boyfriend for this young lady in Fairy Tale. Including a scene where he just drops from the sky, scoops her up, and says 'Excuse me, but we have a dinner reservation in ten.'
Tony Stark/OC | In Search of a Fairy Tale Part II
It's BIRTHDAY PART TWO for @patheticallysentimental! Welcome to a series of gratuitous Cinderella references and a lot of necessary for life smut. One of the BEST PARTS about writing something for someone is that when you love it, you are allowed to feel generous even though you're super grateful for the chance to bring it to life! THANK YOU so much Allie!
((Here's the link to Part I: https://darsynia.tumblr.com/post/667398452756594688/tonyoc-in-search-of-a-fairy-tale-pt-i ))
Pairing: Tony/OC, set during Iron Man 2
Warnings: so much smut, language, bad excellent jokes
Summary: Shortly after his triumph in the senate hearing, Tony fulfills his yearly obligation to MIT by guest-teaching a lecture there. His celebrity often causes some of the students to react enthusiastically, but this year, a lovely student in the front row catches his eye. Not because she's trying to get his attention, but because she's not.
Length: Around 4,500 words
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Part II:
“Tell me you’re even braver in the dark,” Tony says, taking a second to remove his cufflinks and tuck them into a pocket.
“I am, I assure you, entirely terrified right now,” she says. He can feel her open her mouth and close it a few times, as if choosing and then rejecting multiple chances to elaborate.
“What would help?”
“Absolutely no idea,” she admits quietly. He reaches down to capture one of her hands and turns, pulling it to rest on his chest beside the hidden arc reactor, but close enough for her to sense its presence.
Tony can tell that she’s nervous, yes, but even in the half light he can see that her eyes are dilated and full of keen interest. He’s been with precious few shy women, mostly because persuasion isn’t something he needed to bother with if what he’d wanted was any woman, rather than one in particular. Tonight is different. He reaches up and tucks a fallen lock of hair behind her ear, but it immediately slips free again.
“Token resistance?” he teases.
She shakes her head and says, half-teasing, “You’re Tony Stark! What am I even doing here?” It feels like a nod to her initial resistance to him, but her tone implies that she’s fully committed, at this point.
“Networking?” Tony suggests indulgently, reaching out a finger to pull her neckline to the side so he can kiss the lace he finds there. “Be honest, you’re only doing this because you want a look at the arc reactor.”
“I think you’re not quite yourself,” she murmurs, swaying toward him and resting her other hand on his chest. “With fewer drinks in you, you’d probably have said ‘a look at my parts.’”
“Trying not to scare you away,” Tony stage-whispers.
“That’s not making your ‘not drunk’ argument that much more persuasive,” she points out, biting her lip again when he tugs her shirt up to pull it over her head. He tosses it onto the darkness before she can stop him, grabbing her hands and placing them at his collar.
“You unbutton me, and I’ll do my best to make you forget that’s what you’re supposed to be doing,” Tony tells her, resting a hand on the small of her back to brace her for what he’s about to do.
Then he ducks his head down to blindly find the edge of her lace with his tongue; everything about her sweet softness is what he’d wanted all day. Tony cups her with his free hand, and as soon as his thumb brushes across her tight nipple, he can tell by her noise of pleasure that they have both deprioritized his buttons.
He can’t reach across to the other breast with her single remaining arm in the way (even though all she’s doing now is clutching him as if her knees can’t hold her up), so Tony switches to kiss his way over to her tattoo, finding it by the subtle change in her skin’s texture. He swipes at it with his tongue, noticing that she’s managed to undo a single button, and lifts his head to comment.
She speaks first. “If you make a joke about that being stimulating, I will walk right ou--”
Her exasperation sounds like experience, and Tony wants her focused on him and only him right now, so he sinks a hand into the hair at the base of her neck, interrupting her in a fierce, demanding kiss. He’s mentally at her mercy, but she’s physically at his, and Tony keeps her with him as he moves backwards up onto the desk, his other hand seeking the fastening of her jeans.
“Oh, fuck , yes,” she whimpers when he doesn’t seek to shove her freed garment down, and instead turns his hand to slide his fingers past the waistband of her panties. She’s wet, desperately so, and he sympathizes every bit as much as he’s gratified. Tony lifts his head to see her reaction to his touch, her features barely visible, but she takes the opportunity to say, “Wait--” and reach for his belt.
“If you insist,” he laughs, pulling his hand free so he can get up. After releasing his buckle, Tony stops so he can watch her step out of the tight denim. Without thinking, he puts his wet fingers in his mouth to clean them off, closing his eyes and grunting at her variation on the familiar taste. “Mmmm.”
He opens his eyes to see her staring at him, naked from the waist down. The lace bra she’s wearing has earned its place in his permanent fantasies, and so does the awed, desire-flushed look on her face. He can tell she’s blushing even without the lights on.
“What, you don’t believe me? Sit down,” he says in a voice he’d never use in a classroom.
“I--” she starts, but he interrupts her.
“Please.”
She’s breathing hard, tempted and terrified, but her eyes drop to the buttons they’ve both forgotten about. Her smile as she steps closer is just on this side of smug, and Tony reminds himself that there’s no small amount of confidence that he’s granting her, with this encounter. To emphasize that particular lesson, Tony waits until she’s halfway through unbuttoning him to lick the back of the hand he’d had in her panties. Her hands pause, and she gasps.
“Really?” she asks in a tiny voice.
“Just you wait.”
It takes her as long to undo the final two buttons as it had taken for all the rest, and Tony doesn’t help at all.
He doesn’t help her pull the shirt from his waistband either, but he does steal a heated kiss when she leans close to slide it down his arms. A few minutes later, both shirts are lost in the darkness, and he’s helping her find a comfortable position lying back on the desk lengthwise.
“Can’t believe you had the audacity to hide those in those horrible pants,” Tony tells her. He sits down in the chair and rolls closer to her so he can rub warmth along her legs with both hands. “It’s criminal. I should throw you in leg jail.” She laughs, but she’s not relaxed enough, and he can tell. Tony recognizes her anxiety, but he also knows that assuaging it will be worth every minute of longing, so right before he nudges her legs apart, he teases her again. “The more tense you are, the more skilled I will end up looking, so keep it up.”
“What’s criminal is how attractive you are when you’re deliberately acting like a complete asshole,” she says, lifting her head to glare at him. The amused outrage slowly fades away as he holds her gaze and strokes firm, sensual caresses that advance toward where they both want him to focus his attention. Tony only breaks eye contact when he turns to kiss the leg he rests on his shoulder.
“You were saying?” he grins.
“Carry on, Prince Asshole,” she manages, eyes wide, lips swollen from his kisses and her teeth.
“I’m definitely an asshole, because my goal here is to have so much fun we ruin the finish on the wood of this desk,” Tony tells her. She gasps, and that’s when he reaches out and swipes his thumb over her very core, following the movement with his tongue seconds later. “Mmm, and you won’t even feel guilty about it,” he says as he tastes her, lips and tongue intimately painting the words to the backdrop of her pleasure-soaked noises.
There’s something otherworldly about the way her back arches in delight, the lines of her body edged in the white light of the full moon. She’s sensitive and abandoned, probably unused to the intensity of what he’s doing, and Tony’s all in, two thick fingers buried inside her and curled just so, his other hand resting gently but firmly on her stomach. Every so often, never predictably, Tony swipes down with his thumb, shocking her with the change in sensation. Each time, she shakes a little, swearing under her breath or praising him in a backhanded way (‘Jesus fuck , you glorious bastard narcissist;’), and he takes the opportunity to kiss his grin into her inner thigh, to tempt her to swear even more. Tony’s in heaven, knuckle-deep in one of his favorite activities, each shudder and moan sending him further into anticipatory bliss.
“Can you take three?” he asks, punctuating his question with a swirling suck on her swollen bud. Her hips startle up, stopped by the solid weight of his other hand. Hers stretches down in caressing apology, and impishly, Tony grabs it, encouraging her to sit up just a little, both of them shifting to accommodate.
“What--” she starts to ask, but Tony sits back, his face slick and satisfied, pulling her hand all the way down to add one of her fingers to his two. He gently unfurls her thumb so that it rests against her clit, rubbing it as they move together. He leans over again to taste everything he can reach, sloppy and enthusiastic. Tony glances up to see that the way she’s sitting blocks almost all light, so most of her is in shadow but for the edges of her facial features, the points of her nipples against the lace of her bra, and the arm that crosses her body down to where he’s pleasuring her. It’s an arresting, hedonistic view, and he loves it. “You filthy, brilliant man,” she groans when she sees his smug expression.
“Well,” he laughs, pushing his tone over the line into insufferable. “I had to make sure that this was worth you compromising your principles.”
“You are the absolute worst--” she gasps out, the words cutting off when he reaches up and shoves his cunt-wet free hand under the elastic of her bra to squeeze her nipple between his first two fingers. Her entire body tenses up, even (especially) inside, and she turns her head, cramming a fist into her mouth to stop herself from screaming as she comes. The silver-shadowed sight of her abandoning herself to the pleasure he’s wrought from her is gorgeous . Tony untangles their hands so she can feel less confined, selfishly thrusting his fingers back inside her one last time to feel the clenching strength of her orgasm.
“Gorgeous,” he decides to tell her out loud, kissing her thigh.
“Messy,” she counters, her legs going limp after he guides them down from his shoulders.
“Almost not worth it if it isn’t,” he tells her. Tony wipes his face off onto the palm of his hand and rubs both hands together. He knows he’s been this ready for his turn before, but damn, it’s been a while since he’s spent so many hours ramping up for it.
“Use my shirt,” she says, her voice weak but joyful.
“That shirt would collapse into threads if I so much as looked at it sideways,” he objects, but when he glances at her, she looks down at herself and back at him.
“Fuck up my shirt or I leave the bra on, Tony Stark. I seem to recall you’re a boob man, aren’t you? I’ve got a spare top in my bag, and I couldn’t be happier to sacrifice the blue one on this particular altar.”
He twists his lips sideways in a smirk, searching on the floor in the half-light till he finds it. “Fine, fine, but you should know I don’t like being told what to do.” It doesn’t take long to wipe his hands and face dry, but he does try to do it carefully enough not to rip the thing.
“Stark, aliens making first contact will know you don’t like being told what to do,” she teases, pulling her bralette off over her head. Her breasts are full and lush, tipped with nipples he would stop to taste even if the world was ending. Fuck, Tony thinks, his mind going blank as he reaches for his zipper.
Tony’s so lust-focused as he steps out of his pants a minute later that he has to think hard to remember what they’d been saying. “You changing genre on me? Thought this was a fairy tale.”
She hops down from the desk, turning her body sideways with some strategic arm placement, obviously concerned that there was still a chance of being seen through the windows. Once she’s farther into the room she lets her arms fall away. There’s something touching about that, and given their first impressions of each other, it’s significant, too.
“We’re conspicuously missing a villain, aren’t we? Unless you’re Prince Harming, and it’s really fairy horror?”
“Excuse me,” Tony says, pretending to be deeply affronted. “I’m not sure I can continue if you’re going to steal all the best jokes.”
“This is much worse than I thought,” she says, stepping close enough to graze his petulantly crossed arms with her breasts. Reaching up with a clearly-feigned look of concern, she reaches up to test his forehead with the back of her hand. “The real villain here appears to be the incurable affliction of a bad sense of humor.”
Tony moves his arm to hold up a single finger, but he does it in such a way that he is able to blatantly rub his forearm against her chest. “Not incurable.” He starts walking her backwards, angling toward a flat stretch of wall between two file cabinets. “I know just the thing.”
Even in the dim light he can see the way her face crunches up in amused regret. “I walked right into that one,” she groans.
“That’s the plan, yes,” he tells her, herding her up against the wall, giving in to his desire to slide his thumbs over her nipples at the same time as kissing her, tasting her gasp. The way she grabs at his arms makes him feel powerful, and the sounds she makes send his simmering desire back to desperation levels. “Ready to be the heroine?” he rumbles into her ear before moving back just long enough to pull off his boxer briefs.
Tony kicks them aside, but when he refocuses on her, she’s got wide eyes and a hand over her mouth. She’s not laughing, but she looks amused. He knows it’s not biological, for obvious reasons, but there’s a chance she’s struck by the pattern of underwear he’d thrown on that morning.
“Was I wearing the ones with little hearts all over them?” he asks, putting his hands on his hips.
“No no,” she breathes, shaking her head and taking a deep breath to let it out as if trying to calm down. “It’s just-- I’m the glass slipper!”
They look at each other for a few seconds in the blue glow of his arc reactor, both trying and mostly managing to master their amusement, until Tony finally says, “Are you calling me a heel?”
They both crack up, Tony falling over toward her with one hand holding him up on the wall, his head on her shoulder and hers pressed against his chest. Their helpless amusement shifts, first as opportunistic caresses and then deliberate ones. The blue-tinged darkness in their little nook contributes to her bravery, just as he’d hoped it would, and when he cups her ass and slips his fingers down far enough to tease her slit from behind, she drags her fingernails along his back and into his hair, forcing his lips to hers. It’s enough for Tony to take charge, reaching down to lift her up and onto him.
With all of his willpower, he holds still just there, seeking her tongue and dominating it, thrusting, begging, demanding. She rolls her hips and wraps her legs around him, mouthing ‘yes’ against his lips as she sinks down.
“Fuuuuuuck,” he groans. The darkness combined with the intimacy of laughing together such a short time ago has really turned up the sensation, and Tony initially just ruts against her with as much force as he can. He manages to reassert some semblance of humanity after throwing his head back and gulping air, a string of filthy praise and gratitude tumbling free.
“I agree, all of it,” she says, pressing her lips to his shoulder and her hand against his cheek. “Fuck, I honestly think this would cure the incurable,” she adds, shifting her hips so he can thrust even deeper. The moment is ridiculous and glorious and honest in a way that’s almost frightening. Tony feels exposed, and he can sense that maybe she does, too. “Are we even going to survive this?” she whispers in his ear.
“Not to be cliché, but--”
“What a way to go?” she guesses, finishing the phrase at the same time as Tony does.
“The villain is dissatisfaction,” he announces, slipping a hand down between them to stroke her. “And we are, fuck-- ” she’d tightened her inner walls around him in pleased shock, “--are thoroughly vanquishing--”
“You really have a superhero’s ego,” she laughs, interrupting him with her hand over his mouth again. “Couldn’t go for the easy scenario, could you?” she asks, the words coming out between hitched gasps of pleasure.
“Hmm?” His brain is completely void of all coherent thought, at this point.
“Look at me,” she orders, and even though he’d just said that he doesn’t like to be told what to do, he does. “Fuck me, Professor Stark,” she says, infusing the words with an insolence that steals all finesse from his movements.
Tony can’t even articulate the jumble of retaliatory and joyful retorts that flood through him, because he’s lost in tight, sweet, warm, and wet. With his arm tight around her and his fingertip drawing letter grades on her clit, he finds her mouth just as she starts to come apart. The hitched gasps and cries she lets out against his mouth combine with the way her body tightens around him, sending him over the edge. Right as he is driven into ecstasy, she turns her head to the side as she’d done the first time, and he ends up with a face-full of her hair.
It smells just as sweet as he’d imagined it would.
***
(Her shirt doesn’t survive its second use as a towel.)
***
Neither of them want to turn on the overhead light when they finally drag themselves away from each other and start looking for their clothes. His debauched Cinderella uses the flashlight from her phone, instead. Tony gets the impression that, unlike multiple encounters in his past, their current reticence isn’t related to regret. It’s not about ‘the harsh light of reality’ or anything like that, either.
He’s not sure how to properly explain it, but there’s a pleasant, storybook atmosphere going on that he doesn’t want to be the first to puncture.
“Wow,” she says as she adjusts her breasts in the black lace bra.
“I know,” he grins from where he’s sitting on the desk. “Touching them never gets old, does it? Even when they’re yours.”
“Okay, no. WOW, but no. Well. Only sometimes,” she says, dropping into the desk chair. “I was reacting to the fact that the clock went off and I didn’t even hear it.”
Tony waits for her to realize she just gave him more of a reason to be smugly satisfied, but she just rolls her eyes. “Wow, the mystery is gone already?” He can’t believe it.
“Thoroughly vanquished.”
“Damn.” Tony picks up her damp, torn shirt and shakes it. “Looks like you’ll have to wear the one in your bag after all.”
“Yep,” she says briskly. “Thanks by the way. It was fun.” There’s an impish light in her eyes that is wholly visible, even though she’s sitting mostly in shadow. “The sex was fun, too,” she finally adds, twenty-six seconds later. He’d counted.
“That is actually one of the nicest post-coital things anyone’s ever said to me,” he tells her loftily. When she narrows her eyes, he adds, “I mean, they’re usually incoherent at the time, and by the time they wake up, I’m already--”
Tony stops himself too late. The truth of his prior behavior floats between them, turning what he’d meant to be a signal of his prowess into an admission of guilt.
“You’re gone,” she finishes quietly.
“It’s a life,” he shrugs.
“Is it?”
Tony looks down, but he’s spent enough time with her this evening that he can still picture her steady gaze. After another twenty-six seconds, he heaves a sigh and stands. “Well, in the interests of learning how to write a happy ever after someday, can I walk you out? Baby steps.”
“Oh! Sure, uh…” she looks over at her backpack and winces, which after a statement as raw as what he’s just said is obviously odd, as reactions go. Trusting his instincts, Tony gets up and starts for the bag.
She throws herself out of the chair and nearly trips on her way to grab it first, but he kind of is a superhero, so he’s got it in his hands by the time she gets close.
“Stark,” she groans, but he’s implacable. There’s something he can’t put his finger on about her reaction, and sure, he’s a narcissist all the time, but Tony’s convinced that this is about him. Specifically.
He’s right.
“Goddamnit,” she says, when he unzips the bag and pulls out the Iron Man t-shirt neatly folded in a ziploc bag.
“You even protected it from crumbs and stains!” Tony says approvingly. “Ooh. Please tell me it’s undersized and stretchy?”
She stomps over and rips it out of his grasp, but there’s a glow to her that he hadn’t noticed except during those first minutes after the orgasm they’d shared. She turns her back on him, and all he can do is watch her take the shirt out of the bag and pull it over her head. It is small.
“I spent all last night writing a paper and forgot my laundry in the washer. I’d put in every single bra but this one. This one looks terrible with the shirt, and when I saw what Tessa was wearing…”
Her voice is resonant, regretful, and deeply embarrassed. Tony walks over and slots up behind her, resting a presumptuous hand directly on her breasts as he presses a kiss to the back of her head. The lace texture underneath makes the smooth, shiny shirt fabric bumpy and uneven under his fingers.
“You thought you’d be disappointing?” he asks in a low, incredulous voice, his lips right against her ear.
“Shut up,” she sulks. “She’s gorgeous.”
“She could be a dual major rocket scientist and electrical engineer and I’d still have spent all day thinking about you,” Tony tells her. It’s more vulnerable truth-telling, but spoken in the kind of voice that could be mistaken for pillow talk.
“You know, I think I might just let myself believe you,” she says softly, her body finally relaxing in his hold. “It’s not like you’ve had to practice the goodbye part very much.”
Tony holds his breath. An impulsive, crazy idea is making its way past all his defenses, but it is both impulsive and crazy. He’s paralyzed. The seconds stretch out, and in his arms, she starts to tense back up.
“Well, I have an 8 AM class, so I’d better--”
“Are you trying to turn back into a pumpkin, my lovely fangirl?” he asks gently.
“Don’t.” The word sounds like it’s torn from her, and she spins away, the slippery fabric of her shirt making it impossible for him to hold on. “You don’t have to--” she closes her eyes tightly, her hands forming into fists for a moment before she relaxes. “It’s fine. I am never and would never ask--”
“What if I did?” he blurts out. His arc reactor might be malfunctioning or something, because he can’t breathe properly. It feels like there’s an elephant sitting on his chest. One that might be wearing an Iron Man suit of its own.
“You’re bad at this,” she accuses, stiffly. “The goodbye. You’re--”
“That’s the thing,” he interrupts brusquely. Tony starts toward her, taking a step every few sentences. “I don’t. I’m not. I never was. I was so good at it that it turned into a Thing. ‘Tony Stark’s Last Words.’ There’s a whole website. After a while most of them just knew; the women would log on and-- You can look it up, just… don’t judge me on how many entries there are before I turned thirty.” Tony laughs, the sound full of self-hatred even to his own ears, and she hugs her arms to her chest. The thing that keeps him talking, the thing that has lit a whole different kind of fire in his chest, is that her eyes are kind. Hopeful. “You’re right,” he nods in pained agreement. “I am bad at this. I’m bad at longevity. I’ve got zero practice.”
He’s made it to within a foot of her, and she hasn’t backed up. Tony’s mouth is dry and his hands are sweaty and he still can’t breathe very well, but this kind, sexy young engineering student can keep up with his mouth in more ways than one and he doesn’t want to give her up so soon.
She takes in a breath, gently lit by the diffuse moonlight that barely reaches this far into the room, and says, impudently, “How much would it suck for you right now if I said I had a boyfriend?”
Relief crashes into him with the same force as his concrete ceiling that time he’d miscalculated how much power to give the repulsors in his boots. Tony glares at her, the corners of his mouth twitching up in sheer delight, because he wholly recognizes the teasing, joyful expression she’s got on her face. “You are such a bitch, I can’t believe--”
“Yeah, well you’re no Prince Charming,” she interrupts, throwing herself into his arms for a kiss that’s equal parts exhilarating and terrifying, now that they’re past the recognizable parts of the story.
It’ll be up to them to write the rest.
He can’t wait.
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darsynia · 2 months
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Oh, thank you so much! I really do love the way RDJ embodies Tony, and it's with the most loving appreciation that I try to approximate it with my stories. It is my favorite high praise to hear that I have!!
Her retort was fun to craft because I realized I could show her intelligence (and mine! hah) by setting it up so that the clock chimed in their location at the same time that it was 12 AM (pumpkin time) somewhere else. It was looking that up that I found out there's a defunct time zone abbreviated as 'WET' (Western European Time), and I'm saving that for another Tony fic sometime, because you know he would know that.
Thanks for reading! Saving my response to chapter 2 for tomorrow so I can hug it for a while!
Tony/OC | In Search of a Fairy Tale pt. I
Hello there! In honor of @patheticallysentimental's birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDAYYYYYY!!) I thought I'd post a Tony smut fic I wrote in her honor a little while back! It's two chapters which I'll split as it got away from me in some of the best ways, haha.
Pairing: Tony/OC, set during Iron Man 2
Warnings: set up for smut, language
Summary: Shortly after his triumph in the senate hearing, Tony fulfills his yearly obligation to MIT by guest-teaching a lecture there. His celebrity often causes some of the students to react enthusiastically, but this year, a lovely student in the front row catches his eye. Not because she's trying to get his attention, but because she's not.
Length: ~4,500 each chapter
Part II is up now! https://darsynia.tumblr.com/post/667769373637984256/tony-starkoc-in-search-of-a-fairy-tale-part-ii
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In Search of a Fairy Tale
Chapter 1
In between searching for a replacement for palladium and turning his PA into his CEO, Tony still has his regular, non-peacekeeping responsibilities. One of these is a yearly promise to guest lecture at MIT, above and beyond the flashy visits he makes periodically. He can’t even remember what the subject is, but the professor had been one of his TAs, and he’s good at his job. Tony shakes the man’s hand and heads for the podium to a standing ovation. The guy had promised to leave him a loose outline, and sure enough, it’s there. Tony supposes he should feel at least slightly guilty when he looks up and sees the sea of excited faces arrayed in front of him, considering his lack of preparation, but then again, he’s Tony Stark.
It’s practically expected.
He starts the lecture with a swaggering kind of false self-deprecation, learning his audience in a way that’s not dissimilar to a stand-up comic. There’s a group of young men who are seated in the very center of the room whose laid-back body language belie their interest in what he has to say. For the first five minutes, Tony circles his words around them. The ringleader calls out a particularly clever answer to one of Tony’s bait questions, and this sets the mood for the whole space. He’d almost forgotten how to enjoy this in the midst of all of his personal shit, Tony thinks to himself. Thankfully, it’s all coming back.
Now that he’s got a focal point for engagement, Tony settles in, lets himself relax into his phrenetic style. He’s always known that people value his attention, and he bestows it generously-- pointing to a good response here, winking at a student there, earning and holding eye contact with multiple people. That’s when he sees her. Front row: black corduroy slacks, long legs, tight sweater, though the young lady in question quickly tips her textbook up against her chest, concealing her curves from view. She turns her head to look behind her at the student answering Tony’s question, which reminds him that he should be doing the same.
He shifts his focus despite being intrigued, because the glimpse of her face he’d caught had been, well. Likely deceptive. Women that beautiful don’t tend to bother with engineering for engineering’s sake, and they certainly don’t tend to hide themselves from him.
When he traces his gaze back in her direction a few minutes later, Tony finds that she’s seated beside the exact archetype he’d been mentally comparing her to. This second student is dressed in stark crimson, pun almost certainly intended. Red stilettos, barely-legal miniskirt, form-fitting top complete with a filmy gold and red knee-length cover-up that he’s pretty sure is sold in the lingerie section. She’s got an Iron Man water bottle on the desk in front of her, and when she sees him looking, the girl coquettishly leans over with bright scarlet lipstick to wrap her mouth around the thick straw.
Happy’s advice has always been to let his eyes linger on women like that precisely once. Deliberately pretending not to notice them never works, but dismissing them does. They can tell themselves Tony’s already found his target for the day and found them lacking in comparison, but only if he clearly notices them in the first place.
He’s sliding his eyes away, his hands moving to illustrate the point his mind and mouth are making on autopilot, when Tony sees Miss Reticent Tight-sweater nudge her friend with an elbow, finally dislodging her from her straw lovemaking. He barks a quick question for the room to percolate on for a few seconds and tips his head to the side, watching. The more conservative of the two girls is hissing something at her companion, who is grinning at him, obviously delighted at having caught his eye twice. Shit.
“Something you wanted?” the red-clad student calls out brazenly.
“Just considering the data on the thickness of that lipstick. Can you count the hours of reapplication like tree rings, do you think?” he asks with exaggerated curiosity. By acknowledging something about her outfit while implying maybe it’s a bit too overdone, he hopes the let down is obvious enough. The reaction of the room implies as much, given the behavior of her classmates. She hams it up, pulling out her lipstick and applying more, right then and there.
He’s meant to be observing this, so Tony positions himself as though he is, but instead, he watches the woman seated beside her.
Her face is uncommonly beautiful. Even from his distant vantage point, he can see that she has sweet features framed by wisps of hair that have escaped her severe bun. It’s early May, but her thick sweater is more suited for deep winter, likewise the corduroy pants she’s wearing. She’s biting her lower lip and watching the seat beside her with trepidation, clearly uncomfortable with the way her companion is putting herself on display. Tony should have long since stopped looking at her, but he can see in his peripheral vision that the other girl’s almost done preening, so he grants himself this one indulgence.
Then, the object of his scrutiny flicks her lovely eyes in his direction, releasing her lip from her teeth in shock to see that he’s actually looking at her. Suddenly, he wants her, this obviously shy, gorgeous girl who is hiding her beauty behind clothing a whole season removed from the weather outside. Tony knows instinctively that while the girl beside her would welcome his interest, this woman would not. In fact, she’s widening her eyes at him, as if pleading for him to look away.
He does, because he has a point he wants to get to before the class is dismissed. For the next fifteen minutes, Tony is disciplined. He doesn’t look at her, he doesn’t look at her tarted-up friend, all the while hoping that the delighted desire that’s curling up his spine and tingling through his veins will be assuaged by a last-minute glance. She’s interested in his mind, that much is clear. That’s the hard part.
Tony’s an expert at the rest.
As often happens, as soon as their professor ends the class, students rush to the front of the room, anxious to get a chance to talk to Tony. The crush of bodies blocks his view, something he should have expected. He’s not surprised when the number of hangers-on thins out and the only student he’d actually wanted to speak with is already gone. He’s supposed to be angling towards monogamy anyway, Tony tells himself. He and Pepper haven’t really talked about the potential that floats between them, but her overall message about his legendary wandering eye was very clear: he’s either interested in Pepper or he’s interested in other women, but there’s no point in a relationship if he’s interested in both.
It’s… taking some time.
Tony takes his leave from the knot of students still hanging around, thanking their professor for ensuring nothing else is scheduled after the class in the same space. The one time that had happened, Tony had needed to call Happy for backup. Hogan had gone overboard, so much so that Tony’s just left him at home for the MIT trip every year since. This had the added benefit of freeing him up to eschew his hotel room in favor of staying with a willing college student (or, memorably, three roommates).
This year was supposed to be different, and now that the shy, lovely student has snuck away, he guesses it will have to be.
If he can’t fool around, he can at least drink, so when (after the fancy dinner Tony treats him to) the professor he’s just guested for invites him to join some of his colleagues in the faculty lounge, that’s what Tony does, late into the evening.
Unfortunately, not even high quality whiskey can chase away the twist of desire that tangles his thoughts with longing.
***
Sometime after eleven PM, everyone goes their separate ways. It turns out that all of the other men are headed home to their wives, and that’s how Tony knows he’s not thoroughly drunk, because he consciously stops himself from making a self-deprecating comment.
He’s still coming up with things he could have said as he makes his way through the building. ‘You go home to your ladies, and I’ll start looking for my lady of the night’ would have been a solid contender-- but then again, maybe he is tipsy. Tony’s never had to pay for sex, and joking about doing so after a few glasses of whiskey is the sort of thing that could show up in a gossip rag by the morning. Especially after that senate hearing.
He ducks into a bathroom and does his business. At the mirror, Tony sees that he’d fucked up buttoning his shirt back up after showing off his arc reactor in the faculty lounge. He does it right this time, but while tucking the shirt in, he clumsily knocks his car keys out of his pants pocket.
Tony heaves a huge sigh, frowning at himself in the mirror. It’s starting to look like a bad idea to leave Hogan at home. He definitely can’t drive to the hotel, and he really shouldn’t risk taking a taxi right now (he doesn’t feel impaired, but he obviously is). The only solution is to kill time here on campus. The low-level arousal that’s been plaguing him since the lecture flares up with that thought. There’s almost no chance that the girl is still awake, even less of a chance that he could find her. Still, what else is there to do?
Tony picks up his suit jacket and puts it back on, adjusting the sleeves. The door swings open and a bearded student walks in, pausing in recognition.
“There a place you kids congregate after hours?” Tony asks. The guy looks at him like he’s crazy, so he adds, “Looking to return something I borrowed.” If he can ‘return’ this attraction, cash it in for a night of pleasure, he’s all in.
The kid eyes him with amusement. “If it was booze, I got some bad news for you, Stark.”
“Yeah, yeah. MIT tenure pays for the good whiskey,” Tony says with a dismissive wave, starting for the door.
“Yo, honestly, check the new media lab building. Final papers are due next week, might get lucky.”
“Thanks, I will.”
Once he reaches the building in question, Tony can’t believe he’d even had to ask. He’d donated funds for its construction! He’d even been at the grand opening, that past March. His access card works in the door, and Tony follows his instincts, passing various closed workspaces in search of the open computer labs.
The girl he’s obsessing over is not in the first two labs he peeks his head into, but he’s got nothing better to do, so he decides to still check the one at the end of the hall.
The setup here is more private, so Tony walks all the way in this time. There’s a single desk at the front facing the rest, obviously meant for a teacher or TA, because its computer chair is oversized and actually comfortable-looking. Seated there is a young woman in a dark blue tank top, her legs curled up beside her in the chair. On her upper arm is a splash of color in a shape that looks familiar. Tony takes a few steps closer, his lips curving into an indulgent smile when he sees her tattoo: a caffeine molecule. He must have made some kind of noise, because she lifts her head.
It’s the girl from class, the one he’s thought about the whole day since.
Both of them freeze, looking at each other. The simulated sound of a church bell starts to toll in the room, probably signalling that open lab time is over. Tony stares at her through the whole sequence, even as the two other occupants of the room pack up their belongings and leave. After all twelve bell tolls are finished, he nods at the delicate sandal that waits for her foot just under the desk.
“I think you were supposed to flee by now, Cinderella.”
“Prince of industry, are you?” she asks, lifting her chin in defiance.
“In a way,” Tony acknowledges. He points with his thumb over his shoulder. “So, evil stepsister or roommate?”
“Roommate, but she’s definitely the ‘toe-mutilating to trick a prince’ type,” the young woman says, dropping her leg down so she can turn and pick up her backpack from the floor. The action lets him see that her shirt is so thin it’s almost threadbare, hinting at the shape of the darker garment she’s got on underneath.
“If this counts as the ball, you might want to have a word with your fairy godmother. She’s skimping on fabric quality,” he remarks. Tony strolls over to the desk, enjoying the burn of arousal as it blazes through his veins. It’s been quite a while since he’s looked forward to an encounter like this, and there’s still a solid chance he’ll be ending the night alone. This girl had obviously not intended for him to see her like this.
“Obviously I’m on India Standard Time, and these are my rags,” she says, smiling up at him sweetly. It’s an unusual answer, and after calculating the time difference in his head, Tony realizes that she is quick as hell. His class had been over at 2:30 PM Eastern Standard Time, which works out to 12 AM IST.
“Nice,” he murmurs. Now that he’s closer, he can see that she’s wearing black lace bra, the kind that’s designed to be seen-- but obviously not by him. He’s a bit stung by that. “I don’t know that I appreciate your turning into a pumpkin for my class--”
“Now you’re just flogging the metaphor,” she says briskly, standing up.
He doesn’t move. Instead, Tony traces his eyes over her face, down to her breasts and back up, to gauge her reaction. A surge of pleasure arcs through him when he sees that she’s looking at his body, too. Her perusal is more extensive, such that when she lifts her gaze, he’s been waiting a while. It’s probably too much to hope that her internal dialogue has followed the same path as his, today. She really is beautiful, but the way her mind works is just as attractive, what little of it he’s gotten to observe. There’s a good chance she’s sexually creative, and he wants to, needs to find that out for himself.
“It’s time to leave. We’re closed for tonight, sir,” she says. There’s an impudent quirk to her lips that makes it very clear she’s chosen her words for the double meaning.
“Even for wishes coming true?” he dares, leaning toward her a bit, pushing the charm.
Her face darkens. She steps back, turning her back on him to shove a rolling file cabinet just far enough so she can slip past it, avoiding him entirely. “With an ego like that, I’d rather kiss the frog!” she mutters, pulling her backpack up onto her shoulder as she moves toward the door.
This stings, but Tony reminds himself that she’d already thought poorly enough of him to cover up for his class on the off chance of what he might do or say, and his very presence is confirming her worst fears. Swiftly, he corrects her, hoping her clever mind will catch the difference before she rushes out.
“I meant my wishes coming true. Your wishes have been communicated quite clearly.”
She stops still, but doesn’t turn around. “Have they? You came here--”
“Coincidence,” he interrupts with a shrug, brushing away the twinge of conscience. She was right, he had come looking for her, but finding her had been sheer luck. “Truth is, I’m not sober enough to drive. I figured, find a lab, maybe I could dip into the Department of Agriculture’s secure servers, swap their Chick Cam feed with a nightclub’s security footage.”
Her shoulders shake, but when she speaks, her voice is rock steady, no sign of laughter. He suspects if she turns around, he’ll see the smile she’s concealing. “You have a long way to go before you qualify as a Prince Charming, you know that, don’t you?”
“Always have.”
Now she turns. “If you’re drunk--”
“Tipsy, please,” he says, mockingly. “You’d know if I were drunk.” Her eyes are kind, and he feels the impulse to press his luck. Already he feels more like himself, like maybe having found her has transmuted the alcohol in his system into anticipation.
“If you’re drunk,” she repeats, more gently this time, “--you shouldn’t be hitting on anything but a soft bed.”
“I’m fresh out,” Tony says, but he inclines his head to acknowledge her change in demeanor.
“No hotel?”
“Risk of bad press if I drive, same thing with a taxi.”
She takes a step toward him. “Do you need a ride?”
“I would love one,” he says, infusing his voice with as much promise of pleasure as he can. His gauge is off, though, because she rolls her eyes. Marching past him, she pulls the chair out from behind the desk she’d been sitting at and rolls it over.
“Sit.”
He regards her with suspicion but does what she asks, led both by aching want and simple curiosity. Something deep down prompts him to goad her about his acquiescence, as if being obedient while impaired by alcohol requires an act of defiance to sit well.
“Okay, but I didn’t bring the fluffy handcuffs, so I don’t know what you’re--”
She rushes to press her palm against his lips, the meaty part just under her thumb. Her touch sizzles through him, aided by her tiny gasp when Tony’s own hand shoots up to hold her there. He quirks his eyebrow and then slowly slides his fingers along the skin of her wrist, watching her. She lets out a shaky breath and her eyes flutter closed.
“God, that is unreal. What did you do, slip iron filings into my soda at dinner?” she breathes.
“Believe it or not, I’ve been worse at this since the arc reactor. Something about facing your own mortality,” Tony says. It’s the truth, not that he’s admitted it out loud yet, not even in the privacy of his own mind. “How’s that for sobering?”
Instead of trying to pull away, she loosens her hand from its defensive fist and rests her soft, warm fingers along his neck. It’s a gut-punch, like maybe she’d meant to cup his face in a loving gesture all along, if he managed to earn it.
He absolutely has not, but under her fingers Tony’s slowly conflagrating, consumed by a wild need that verges on desperate. There’s no guidebook for this; he’s got a sixth sense about women, sure, but not this woman. Last year, he’d learned why he should have spent his evening with Ho Yinsen all those years ago in Bern. Tonight, Tony’s starting to understand that the person he is turning into is more interested in the Cinderella type than her sexed-up wicked stepsister.
“That was a lot of expressions you just cycled through,” she whispers.
Tony smiles up at her, knowing she’ll feel the shift of his muscles underneath her hand. “Coming to grips with the idea that I might enjoy just sitting and talking to a woman, for once.”
The words paint a light blush onto her cheeks, but she scoffs and steps away, removing her hand. “It’s kind of fascinating to watch the way your mind works in real time. I can see you working out how to charm me.” With that, she walks over to one of the student chairs and sits, walk-rolling it with her feet until she’s a yard away. A challenge in her eyes, she leans back and crosses both her arms and legs. She’s turned herself into a fortress of mind and body, daring him to attempt to breach her.
He’s more than up to the task. “Are you saying the key to attracting you is through my mouth? Because that’s a talent of mine.” Her eyes widen, and he feigns embarrassment. “Talking. I was referring to talking. Obviously.”
“I can still read the letters on that neon sign you just built, even if they aren’t lit up,” she says, making flashing light gestures with her hands while mouthing the words ‘OPEN FOR BUSINESS.’
“You weren’t picturing that sign when you put on that sweater this afternoon?” Tony asks, stretching his leg out and setting his heel down on the floor, the rest of his foot angled up.
“It was perfectly lovely, thank you very much!”
“I agree,” Tony says, in heartfelt appreciation.
“You--” she huffs out a breath. “Stop that.”
“Stop what?” he asks, changing nothing.
“That face you’re making. Your whole… it’s-- stop it!” She motions in his direction, and the worn-out neckline of her tank top slips sideways, revealing the wide black lace of the bralette she’s wearing. He wants to look, but she narrows her eyes at him, daring him to look. Naturally, he resists.
“You’re going to have to be more specific,” Tony says, still avoiding looking at her exposed shoulder strap. He rolls his foot down, moving towards her.
She throws her head back and angles her arm over her eyes before she speaks, sounding nervous. “Are you trying to seduce me?”
He chooses a regular voice, sensing that she’ll appreciate honesty, even if it’s not complete honesty. Now that he can freely look at the lace of her bra strap, he wants to trace it with his tongue. Tony knows better than to say that, so he asks, “Do you want me to?”
“I shouldn’t,” she groans.
Tony chuckles, deep and provocative.
She lifts her head but leaves her arm draped over it. “That just encouraged you, admit it!”
He stretches his leg out and plants his heel again, this time with the other foot. “What matters is what you want. What were you avoiding with your granny outfit today?”
“I didn’t want you to think I was anything like my crazy roommate,” she admits shyly.
“Mission accomplished.” Tony rolls his foot down halfway, which moves his chair to within a foot and a half of hers. “Tell the truth, right now:” he says, dropping into a commanding tone. “What went through your mind when you saw me looking at you?”
Her whole body reacts to his question, shoulders lifting defensively, face flaming red, arm dropping to wrap around herself in a way that just so happens to thrust her breasts forward. On seeing this, Tony feels like his foot’s resting on an accelerator instead of thin air, because his body ramps up, full throttle. Possibilities flash through his mind; his tongue flicking out to taste her tattoo, her leg bending as she strokes him with the bottom of her foot, the sweet smell of her hair as he groans his release. It doesn’t take as long to pull himself back from those moments as it would have if he were drunk, and that’s a very good thing for his hopes to make them a reality.
Then, she answers his question, thick lashes nearly brushing her pink cheeks, demure and devastating.
“I wished I was the kind of girl to catch your attention. But--” the whispered confession fills out into a tone that’s almost apologetic. Her eyes are wide, now. “--the man standing there looking at me was different, for just those seconds. I don’t know how to explain it.”
He’d dropped the act just then, and this beautiful, perceptive young woman had noticed. Tony reaches out and grabs the arms of her chair, pulling it to his. “And now?” he asks, and fuck, Tony’s not drunk anymore, but he’s intoxicated by her, enough to have infused the question with far too much vulnerability for his liking.
Her brows furrow for a few seconds, head tipping to the side to regard him. Tony clenches his jaw. Honestly, he’s not sure whether it’s because he doesn’t want her to see that vulnerability or because he doesn’t want to let his facade creep back up. She reaches towards his face, and Tony’s not above being predictable. He leans back.
“Oh no, you don’t,” she mutters, and with a nervous little bite to her lip, she launches forward.
Tony gets ahold of her and shoves her chair away with one foot while the rest of him focuses on pulling her close, like he’s starving for physical contact, and shit, he probably is. They end up with her legs curled up on his lap rubbing pressure that’s just on the good side of too much, her right side leaning against him, left hand pressed to her own chest like a makeshift defibrillator. Tony’s own body has turned his blood to whiskey, and desire-drunkenness has lowered the limits she’s taught him to follow. As she traces her fingertips along his still-clenched jaw (strained by patience, now, not fear), he lets himself rest his hand directly on her ass.
To his utter delight, this causes her to slide her hand softly up into his hair, rather than violently across his face. Tony nudges her with his nose, seeking her lips, but she leans back a few inches to look him in the eyes.
“If I ask you if you’re still tipsy, will you lie?”
“If I were tipsy, I’d have made a ‘stroke of midnight’ joke by now.”
She just looks at him, lifting her eyebrows.
“I won’t have to lie,” he says, giving in to his need to thrust up against her with a bit-back groan. “--if that’s the answer you needed.”
“What even is my life right now?” she whispers, clutching his shoulders and shifting so she can settle herself, yes, fuck, exactly where he wants her to be, her legs bracketing his hips in the thankfully oversized chair. He takes this cue to slide one hand up under her thin top, wide and warm along her back. The lace of her bra is so fine that he can feel the threads catch on the rough skin of his fingers. Her breath hitches along with his as Tony thrusts his hips up again, capturing her lips in an impatient kiss. He can’t help but feel powerful when her hand in his hair tightens its grip in response, especially when she lets out a small, desperate little noise when he strokes her tongue with his.
Her fierce grip and determination shifts to a shy shock when he starts rolling the chair around the desk and then past it, towards the wall. To see where he’s going, Tony kisses his way to her throat, turning them so he can slow-walk and not have to lift his head. He’s seeking both privacy and something more sturdy than the chair. While there’s a rock solid looking desk in the corner he’d aimed for, it’s right beside the window.
He looks up at the angle of the lights and the position of the desk, trying to calculate how much of what he has planned will be visible from outside.
“Oh, your face right now!” she laughs, touching her hands to each cheek before sliding them down so she can push off of his chest to get up. “Hold that thought.”
She rushes over to the door, flipping the lock and then the light switch. It helps some, but the hallway is still lit outside the room, and with the scattered LED indicator lights in the lab, the two of them can still be seen. Tony toes off his shoes and reaches down to retrieve the pair of magnets he keeps tucked into one of them. They’re too powerful to risk ruining anything he’d keep in his pockets, but that strength might be just the thing, tonight.
“Here,” he says, walking over to her. The door is, as he’d hoped, metal. Tony stretches his suit jacket upside-down across the window built into the door and secures it with the magnets.
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you of all people would carry magnets on contingency,” she laughs. He offers an exaggerated shrug, walking backwards toward the desk by the window in the process. He can see the reflected shine of her eyes and her smile, but she’s watching rather than following him. Taking time to make the room less exposed for a sexual encounter has offered her a chance to second guess that encounter. To his relief, she comes up behind him as he runs his hand along the top of the desk, lifting up on her toes to drop a kiss on his shoulder before dropping back down and pressing herself against his back.
===
Note: I wanted to add that, as I wrote this, it was the ‘Vamp up and get the billionaire’ part that Tony is resisting. Confidence and coquettish behavior aren’t inherently bad! It’s part of Tony moving on from earlier characterizations—but that might not come across to everyone. It’s meant to be fame-chaser shaming, basically! Thanks for reading! Part II is almost all smut :D.
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darsynia · 3 months
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Weather be like: all of the above
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darsynia · 3 months
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Happy surprise: after completely breaking on 9/15, Fanfiction.net's view stats are back as of the new year!
What makes this ironic and kind of hilarious is that for many years, when the new year hit, view counts would break for the first week of January... so I guess this is the reverse! We'll see how 2024 to 2025 goes, I guess! Given that 2023 marked my 20th year posting stories on the site it was sad to think that part of the process was gone. It's not the best site and I'm sure it's barely hanging in there, but there's something satisfying about that continuity.
I'm just delighted to see view stats for the first time for stories that were posted after mid-way through September. Inspiring!!
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darsynia · 3 months
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Iconic.
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HELL YES I love you sir.
https://x.com/THR/status/1744168103808811048?s=20
That's the acceptance speech if anyone's curious! Well deserved, and this match between you and the missus is epic!!
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