#the one where justin hammer gives an award to tony stark

[superheroesandspies]

Sam Rockwell Presents Robert Downey Jr. at the 2024 Academy Awards

Robert Downey Jr. wins Best Actor in a Supporting Role for the portrayal of Lewis Strauss in Oppenheimer.

[not-close-to-straight]

More Than Words (Twenty Four)

Ohhh this chapter is sad, but honestly the scene with Johnny is beautiful. TW for mentions of depression/Peter coping by way of too many pills. Just basically what you’d expect after last chapter. Tissues are needed.

MTW MASTERLIST HERE

**************

Three months later…

Afterwards, after everything, after mysteriously appearing at Haven Mercy Hospital and being lost unconscious for most of two weeks, after the panic and anxiety and screaming, after repeated sedation and psychological evaluations, after multiple prescriptions for pain pills and sleep aids and mood stabilizers--

--afterwards, even three months afterwards, Peter just never quite recovered. 

The Omega had always been lean, but afterwards Peter couldn’t seem to put on weight at all. His cheekbones stayed sharply defined, his collarbone oddly prominent beneath his shirts. His wrists were fragile, skinny jeans loose at his waist, and the dusting of freckles across his nose stark against skin that stayed pale no matter how often his friends came along to drag him out into the winter sun.

The aches and pains from his ordeal lingered far longer than they should have, and the Omega compensated with prescription level narcotics to keep himself numb. And If he wasn’t numb then Peter was angry, sharp and caustic and swinging between furious that Cable had ruined his life and devastated thinking about Wade left alone without him. 

It wreaked havoc on his mind to be so constantly close to out of control, so Peter took dose after dose of the stabilizers to keep himself steady and empty and disassociated from it all. 

Once he was numb and steady, the Omega was only ever tired, but nightmares were a constant companion since leaving the hospital so Peter took the sleeping pills every night before passing out comatose in his bed so he could make it till morning. 

Numb. Empty. Exhausted. 

The world was dull, extra strength blockers muting the Omega to the emotions or scent of anyone who passed by, extra strength suppressants keeping him so far past blank that other Omega’s stopped in the street and stared at him in shock, Alphas started to go out of their way to understand why such a pretty Omega scented so pale but then turned and left again when they caught sight of the empty in Peter’s eyes. 

This new reality was far away from the giddy happiness that had been days with his Alpha, the drugging lust of unbridled moments when touches grew careless and kisses grew sharp, the hazy beauty of trust and love and adoration sank deep into dark red eyes…

This was so far away from everything and the thought never failed to make Peter’s mood dive, to make his body ache as if grief left physical bruises, to bring his nightmares back around into vivid focus. 

But the pain pills helped. The mood stabilizers helped. The sleep aids helped. And the Omega refilled the prescriptions as often as allowed and took the pills all together so he didn’t have to go a single moment without something to shield his heart and soul from the mate sickness tearing ragged edges at his sanity. 

The award money from the expose against Justin Hammer paid the bills, and even though Peter had been offered several different jobs and several glowing recommendations both from his former boss at the Bugle and Tony Stark himself, the Omega turned every opportunity down. 

He didn’t have to work quite yet and he didn’t want to work maybe ever again, so the Omega simply didn’t. 

He simply didn’t.

The Omega didn’t do much of anything, really. It was a miserable winter in New York so most reasons for wanting to stay home were at least partially credible. His reasons for avoiding going to the movies or out for dinner with his friends and May were less credible, but everyone tried to be patient, tried to be understanding, tried to give Peter the benefit of the doubt and all the time he needed to work past whatever had happened. 

They didn’t really know what had happened of course. Doctor Grey had assured May that Peter’s hurt hadn’t been everything awful like they’d initially feared but she couldn’t-- or wouldn’t-- say more than that. 

Nobody knew and Peter wasn’t inclined to say much of anything anymore, much less to talk about his time away, so May never pushed but only offered, “I’m here if you want to talk, Peter.” and his friends acted as if nothing was wrong, acted like he was being a cranky Omega and just needed a little bit of time to get over it.

From a doctor’s standpoint, neither approach was ideal but on the days Peter felt anything at all, he felt a little grateful for people who loved him and tried. 

Gwen and Mary Jane came over at least once a week to bring Peter food and invade his space by way of cuddles and movie marathons. Mary Jane would snuggle close into Peter’s side and purr into his ear, rub her cheek into his shoulder and try to share her muted scent with the other Omega, giving comfort by way of shared biologies and the knowing that sometimes only an Omega could understand how someone else was hurting. 

Gwen’s approach was more along the lines of loving bullying, the Alpha pushing and prodding and practically manhandling Peter up against her body until they were plastered together on the couch, or hauling Pete’s lean frame right on her lap and hand feeding him whatever food they’d brought along, growling and teasing and being as obnoxious an Alpha as she dared until the Omega would finally, reluctantly eat. 

Harry came over more often than the girls did, the instinct to protect an Omega he loved over-riding the other responsibilities in his life. The best thing about being Norman Osborn’s son was a guaranteed paycheck and position at the company whether he was physically present or not, and Harry took full advantage of the privilege. 

Some mornings he brought along the newspaper and a new book for Peter and cajoled the Omega outside and at least down to a little cafe for breakfast, other times he dropped by for lunch with a stack of applications for internships or jobs he thought Peter would be interested in. Every once in a while he’d get the Omega out of the house after dark for a movie or even just a walk through the park to look at the stars and Peter always smiled a little bit those nights, smiled and one time even stood on his toes to give Harry a very soft kiss on the cheek. 

Johnny only came by a few times, once or twice with the girls where he sat awkwardly in the other chair and watched as Gwen and MJ chatted amiably about their days while brushing at Peter’s hair and fussing about his clothes, and once or twice with Harry when they went for lunch or a walk. The Alpha was withdrawn and quiet, never quite looking at Peter but unable to look away all at the same time. 

If Peter were healthy and normal and whole he might push Johnny up to a wall and demand to know what was wrong, why the Alpha was being weird, or he might even cry and ask why Johnny hadn't come to the hospital. 

But the Omega wasn’t healthy and normal and whole so he ignored his friend and kept his very limited energy focused on the people that were actively trying to engage him, not the person who couldn't seem to find anything to say, the person who seemed content to let ten years of friendship fade away because Peter had been gone. 

“How’s Johnny?” May would ask when she called every single night, and every single night Peter answered, “He’s fine, Auntie. He’s fine and I’m fine and we’re all-- we’re all fine.” 

And it was a lie, it was always a lie. Peter wasn’t fine and his friends weren’t fine and nothing about anything was fine. 

It was a lie, and as the days out of the hospital turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months, the prescriptions got refilled and the curtains stayed drawn and Peter sank further and further into himself. He cancelled plans and turned down invitations and snapped at the girls when they came in uninvited, dodged Harry’s attempts at drawing him out and the few times that Johnny looked up and met his eyes, Peter simply looked away. 

He was tired and he couldn’t pretend otherwise anymore. 

He was tired, but May and Gwen and MJ and Harry and Johnny didn’t seem to get it, because every time the Omega cancelled plans yet again, they just made a date for later and tried again. 

Again and again and again. 

And again and again and again until Peter quit answering the door and started avoiding their calls. 

“Leave me alone.” he whispered to his phone as it rang shrill in the silent apartment, the screen over bright and noise jarring. It was Gwen or it was Mary Jane, it was May or it was Harry, it wouldn’t be Johnny but it was maybe Doctor Grey calling to check on him and the Omega couldn’t do it any more. 

“Please just leave me alone.” 

****************

“Peter, you should come for dinner tonight. I’m inviting the neighbor across the street, do you remember her? Her grandson Flash used to go to school with you and Gwen ages ago. He’s home from the military and--” 

“I’m already in bed, May.” Peter could hardly lift his head from the pillow, the sedatives running drugged and lethargic through his system. “Maybe another time.” 

“...I’m worried about you, Peter.” the Alpha whispered. “It’s been weeks since I’ve seen you, love. Have you thought any more about coming to stay with me? We could move you out of that place over a weekend and you could just come home with me.” 

“M’fine, Auntie.” 

“No you’re not.” 

“No.” the phone slipped from the Omega’s hand and clattered on the floor as he fell into thankfully dreamless sleep. “No m’not.” 

****************

“Pete?” One windy, awful day Johnny let himself into Peter’s apartment and called for the Omega. “Pete are you-- it’s Johnny. I um-- I knocked but you didn’t answer so I used my key.” 

There was no answer, and the Alpha took another step into the entry way. “Pete? Are you home?” 

“M’here.” Peter was sat on the floor in the very middle of his living room, fingers clenched into the shaggy carpet, back ram rod straight, face washed bloodless and frightened. “Johnny, I’m here.” 

“Hey hey hey.” Johnny shucked away his scarf and hurried to kneel at Peter’s side, three months of awkwardness dissolving in an instant as protect won out over uncertain in the Alpha’s core. “What’s going on? Pete? What happened, what happened?” 

He pried the Omega’s fingers out of the rug and rubbed them between his palms, blowing gently to try and warm him up. “It’s freezing in here, honey. How long have you been sitting in the cold? Is your heater working?” 

“Dunno.” Peter shook his head. “Dunno how long I’ve been here. How long have you been here? Has my door been open the entire time?” 

“...no.” Johnny cursed under his breath when he got a peek into Peter’s glazed eyes. “No, Pete. Your door’s only open cos I came through a minute ago. What happened? What is going on with you?” 

“I got in a taxi. Told him to take me to the movie theater.” It was outright eerie how Peter talked these days, as if he was reciting memorized facts, like he’d told himself the story over and over before telling anyone else. “Haven’t left the house in four days, thought it was time. We drove eight blocks, maybe nine and then a big truck changed lanes too quickly and we almost crashed.” 

“Shit, that’s scary.” the Alpha inched closer so he could rub at Peter’s shoulders too. “You’re alright though? Nobody got hurt and you made it home. Everything’s okay?” 

“I panicked.” Peter said dully. “Started screaming, pretty sure I started screaming. There was a lot of noise and I don’t usually hear much noise. Guess it was me. Must have been me, right? I must have been screaming.” 

He was unfocused, staring, and missed the way Johnny grimaced away from the monotone words. “I told the cab driver to take me home, told him to take me back and he brought me here instead so I just-- I just sat down. You came in. I’m freezing.” 

“Yeah, yeah you’re practically frozen solid.” Johnny pushed back all his questions and worry about Peter panicking, ignored the nagging feeling of unease when the Omega referred to his apartment as here instead of home, and focused instead on getting Peter warm.  “Come on, come here with me. Nice hot shower and I’ll get you some food, alright? Thai food from that place down the way you like so much. How many egg rolls do you want?” 

“I’m not hungry.” Peter was awkwardly pliant as Johnny got him to his feet and helped him down the hall, almost limp as the Alpha yanked his shirt up over his head and then his jeans down and off as well. He’d never been much of a shy Omega, not around his friends, not around the people he knew and loved and trusted, but it was awkward how Peter just stood there and let Johnny get him nearly naked without protest. “Not-- not hungry.” 

“Sure you are.” the Alpha kept his eyes on Peter’s face and forced a cheerful smile. “We’re due for a lunch date anyway, right? It’s about time I start helping out, sorry I’ve been MIA but I’m here now and we can get warm and then we’ll eat and then we can talk and then--” 

“I’m not hungry.” The Omega said again and this time he sounded exhausted. “Just tired. Cold. Will you shower with me?” 

Before everything, Johnny would have jumped at the chance to shower with the pretty Omega. Lathering shampoo into Peter’s thick hair and getting his hands to wash down that gorgeous body was the sort of thing every Alpha dreamed about, especially an Alpha that had been half in love with the Omega Peter Parker since he’d been old enough to know what love was. 

Before everything, Johnny would have made an absolute fool of himself clambering into the shower and grabbing the Omega up tight, but this was after everything and the Alpha couldn’t think about all the things he’d wanted to do with Peter someday. 

After everything, all Johnny could think about was how small Peter looked with his hair too long and curling by his ears, shaggy and stringy and falling into empty brown eyes, and how Peter’s hands shook as he reached for Johnny’s belt and the way that damn ring looked so big and out of place on the Omega’s slim fingers. 

“Peter...” he started lamely, uselessly. “Maybe I’m not the best person to--” 

“Where have you been, Johnny?” the Omega asked softly, and guilt rose bitter in the back of Johnny’s throat. “You didn’t come to the hospital, don’t have anything to say if you come around with everyone else. I don’t want to see anyone but at least at first I would’a liked to see you. Where have you been?” 

“I’m sorry.” There were a whole lot of things the Alpha should have said right then, but all he could manage was, “I’m sorry. I-- I’m here now though, Pete. If you want me to stay.” 

“I’m cold.” Came the simple answer, and In the small bathroom it was more obvious than ever how Peter didn’t scent of anything these days, not honeysuckle and lavender, not even panic and heartbreak and pain. His scent was blank like his eyes and expression were blank and Johnny felt the emptiness like a knife to the gut. 

“I can keep you warm.” the words were out in the air between them before the Alpha had even fully decided to say it. “I-- I can keep you warm, Pete.” 

The shower was barely big enough for the both of them, so Johnny held Peter tight up against his body, cuddling the Omega over his heart and wrapping his arms around the frightfully thin frame. “Such a sad Omega.” he whispered when Peter shivered and tried to curl closer. “So many bad things for such a pretty, perfect Omega to go through. M’so sorry, Pete. So sorry. C’mere love, right here, c’mere.” 

The Alpha kept up a steady litany of sweet nothings as they stood beneath the water, picking up shampoo and working it gently through the Omega’s hair, sweeping the bubbles over Peter’s skin and down his back until they swirled away down the drain. They didn’t need to talk-- or rather, they did need to talk but not right this second-- and Johnny didn’t think he could handle hearing Peter lie about being fine, so he stayed whispering quiet comfort and careful touches until the shower ran cold and it was time to get out. 

He left the Omega swathed in a thick towel and then dried himself off and jogged for his phone. An order into the Thai place Peter liked so much meant Johnny would hopefully have an easier time getting the Omega to eat and if Peter would eat then they could maybe talk and Johnny could stop feeling like he was going to lose his mind.

“Hey sweetheart.” he set his phone down when Peter came shuffling into the living room wrapped in a threadbare blanket. “Let me get you some clothes, alright? I already turned up the heat but you can’t be warm in just that blanket so I’ll get you some pajamas. Give me a sec, okay?”

“What are you doing here, Johnny?” Peter sounded more alert, though his eyes were still dull and tone flat. “I’ve only seen you a few times in the last three months, why the hell are you showing up and showering with me and calling me honey. What are you doing?” 

The Alpha swallowed uncomfortably. “I ordered some food, Pete. Why don't we eat and then we can talk?″

“Tell me why you’re here, or get the hell out.” Peter interrupted, a flash of anger in his eyes that was there and gone in less than a blink. “I’m tired. And I’m cold. And I wanna sleep. Don’t have the energy to entertain anyone today or listen to half ass apologies or-- or pity.” 

There it was again, anger extinguished almost as soon as it sparked. “Why are you here?” 

“... I’m sorry I didn’t come see you in the hospital.” Johnny began slowly, haltingly, sinking down into a chair opposite the couch and clasping his hands between his knees. “I should’ve been there. They weren’t letting any of us back to see you except Mary Jane and when I heard why they thought seeing an Alpha might-- might bother you, I couldn’t handle it. I ran. Didn’t want to be there.” 

Peter only blinked at him, and the Alpha cursed his own weakness before continuing, “Wish I could say I was strong enough to handle it like Gwen and Harry were but I kept thinking about you hurt and it made me throw up every time. Eventually I figured I’d only upset you if I came around and I didn’t want to do that. I know everyone thinks I’m an asshole for leaving you alone but--” 

Johnny spread his hands helplessly. “--I’m here now, okay? I’m here.” 

Peter didn’t reply, and Johnny nodded in weary understanding. “It’s not enough, I know. Too little, too late. But I just, I gotta say something Pete and I want you to let me get all the way through it before you reply or yell at me or throw me out, alright? Can I-- can I ask that?” 

“Ask whatever you want.” Peter burrowed back further into the blanket, playing idly with the ring loose around his finger. “Everyone sorta says what they want these days anyway. Go ahead.” 

It was permission but it was also a tiny bit bitter and the Alpha hesitated for a moment. “Um-- okay. Okay here we go. I know you and I aren’t as close as you and MJ are, and I know you’ve got more history with Harry and Gwen than with me. But I--” Johnny cleared his throat. “I love you just as much as they do. I know I’ve been gone and that’s real shitty of me, but I love you Pete, I do.” 

The Omega twitched uncomfortably, and Johnny rushed on before he lost his nerve, “I know you don’t want to talk about what happened and shit, I dunno if I could handle hearing it but I’m not stupid, Pete. You’re barely functioning, your neck is all scarred up, you don’t scent like nothing anymore and that’s all mate sickness. I know it is. The lady doctor told us you weren’t hurt the way we--” 

The Alpha’s eyes flickered red in distress, and Peter looked away. “--the way we all thought you’d been, but you were still hurt and it's killing me. I hate thinking about you sitting here alone and-- and sad and I just-- okay you know what? I’m just gonna say it.” 

Johnny dug his fingers into his legs in an attempt to ground himself, and blurted, “Pete. I want to bond with you.” 

The Omega made a horrified sort of noise that cut deep deep into Johnny’s heart but he ignored the pain and the way Peter jerked away from him as if terrified, and hurried to finish-- “I just mean a platonic bond, Omega. Nothing romantic, nothing like that. I love you and we’ve had great heats in the past so we know we are compatible at least that way and once it was over, once the mating heat passed I wouldn’t ask anything from you, Pete. Nothing. Ever. Not regular, uh, sexy things and not even your other heats if you wanted to work through them alone.” 

“Johnny.” 

“I’m not asking you to play house Omega with me.” The words tumbled out faster and faster now. “You could move in with me if you wanted cos I’ve got an extra bedroom or you could stay here or move in with May or do whatever you want. The only way to fix this, to keep you from hurting this bad is another bond and Pete, I’d platonic bond with my best friend-- with you-- in a second to save you.” 

“Johnny--!” 

“No questions asked, Pete.” the Alpha looked like he might be close to breaking down, distress forcing it’s way through his blockers and soaking his scent gray. “You don’t have to tell me anything, or give me anything or owe me anything. You tell me ‘yes’ and we’ll take care of it right now so you can move on past all this. You tell me ‘no’ and I’ll drop it right now and never say it again. I promise. Pete, I promise.” 

“No.” The thought of mating with anyone other than his Alpha made Peter’s heart wrench in two. “Johnny, no. I-- I can’t. I can’t.”

Silence in the room, and for a long minute the Omega thought Johnny would get angry and demand an explanation, for a longer minute he thought the Alpha might actually cry, but Johnny didn’t do either of those things. 

The Alpha only looked away to gather himself, and then cleared his throat, “Okay. The offer is here if you want it, alright? Any time. I love you, Pete.” 

“I love you too.” Barely even a whisper, and Peter tried to smile but it was awful and not enough to fill the void that had so suddenly ripped open between the two friends. “Johnny, I love you. And you’re a good Alpha. But I can’t. I can’t.”

“Okay.” Johnny said again, and got to his feet. “Okay that’s-- I um, I ordered food, alright? It’s already paid for and all you’ll have to do is sign for it. I’m gonna go before I mess things up anymore, so I’ll see you around, yeah? Next time Harry comes or maybe when MJ shows up or maybe when Gwen convinces us all to do something stupid like roller skate or--”

“I’m already bonded, Johnny!” Peter wasn’t really sure why he went ahead and nearly shouted it, but the truth was there now and Johnny froze mid step, expression washing with disbelief. “And it’s not-- it’s not a trauma bond okay? I wasn’t scared or searching for stability after something terrible, I wasn’t coerced into anything, I’m bonded. Mated. And that’s why I can’t-- I can’t with you. I can’t do it.” 

“What do you mean it wasn’t a trauma bond?” Johnny didn’t sit back down quite yet, but he didn’t reach for his scarf and coat either. “What else could it be, Pete? I don’t-- I don’t understand.”

“Everyone thinks my Alpha hurt me.” Fury, snapping in Peter’s eyes for a split second. “They keep saying things like forced and Stockholm Syndrome as if my Alpha is capable of doing anything besides taking care of me and loving me and keeping me safe. All my mate ever did was try to keep me safe and I wanted to rip the doctor’s throats out for talking about my Alpha like he was some sort of a monster.” 

“...your mate.” This time the Alpha did sit down, eyes wide and wondering. “Pete, are you telling me that while you were gone you found your mate?” 

“We scent matched.” It felt so good to tell the truth, so good to finally talk and the admission ran honey warm through Peter’s veins. “My suppressants bled out for some reason--” time travel. “--and I knew him more certainly than I’d ever known anyone or anything before in my life.” 

“You scent matched.” Johnny repeated. “I didn’t know that was a real thing anymore.” 

“I didn’t either.” the Omega whispered. “But we are soulmates, me and my Alpha. Scent matched and bonded and my mark--” he touched the scars reverently. “I wasn’t with him long enough to have a mating heat but that doesn’t change that we’re bonded. Meant to be together. I’m his and he is--”

It felt like a prayer, like a confession, something sacred and beautiful and meant to be hushed, so Peter lowered his voice even more, “-- he is mine. I’m his and he is mine and it’s so much more than those words, I can’t explain it, Johnny. I can’t explain it.” 

“The ring--” 

“His. He made it for me.” 

“But how did you end up in the hospital? Why were you unconscious for so long? If this was soulmates and true love then where is your Alpha?” Johnny didn’t mean to sound upset, truth be told he was relieved through to his very core that Peter could tell him it was love and not trauma, but he was upset all the same. “Where is your Alpha and why is he letting you suffer like this? It’s been months, Pete! Where is he!” 

“...I don’t know how to find him.” And just like that, the smile was gone from Peter’s face, the warmth leeching from his body and leaving him shaking, shivering, eyes gone flat and dull again. “We are mates but somehow we aren't meant to be together so we-- we aren’t. We can’t be together so I’m here and he’s-- he’s out there.” 

“Oh, Pete.” 

“I’m here and my mate is somewhere out there.” Peter said again, motioning listlessly to the air. “And I don’t know how to find my way back to him. I miss him, Johnny. Every single day. Every single minute. I didn’t know I could grieve like this and still survive, but here I am anyway, whether I want to be or not. Grieving and surviving even if I don’t want to be.” 

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” 

“This is the first time I’e been able to say it out loud without breaking down.” the Omega dug his fingers into his hair and tugged at the damp strands. “I dunno if that means I’m healing or-- or if I’m finally numb enough that it doesn’t hurt so bad. Dunno which would be better.” 

“Such a sad Omega.” Offer to bond swept aside, misgivings and worry and guilt over his own shortcomings as a friend pushed away, Johnny moved to sit next to the Omega, gathered Peter’s thin frame up into his arms and hugged him close. “Oh such a sad Omega, so so sorry honey. So sorry. Sweet pretty thing, so much sad for such a perfect Omega--” 

Peter tried to laugh hearing the Alpha talk that way, but it caught over a sob and turned right into tears and Johnny only held him tighter, crooning into his ear and rumbling quiet comfort into his skin for a long long time.

It wasn’t all the way the truth, Peter had said nothing about time travel and one hundred and four days and mutants, but he could say something about his mate and it felt like maybe the steel bands at his chest loosened enough to let the him breathe a tiny bit.

And later after the food had come and Peter had managed a few bites, the Omega looked up and asked, “You would have platonic bonded with me to save me?” 

“In a heartbeat.” Johnny broke an egg roll in half and handed half to Peter. “Still would if you really wanted me to.” 

“But you’d be stuck with me.” Peter pointed out. “Couldn’t get a real mate or move on with your life and get married.  Even if you wanted to keep hooking up with random people, they’d see the silver mark on your neck and know you’re bonded. No one sleeps with someone who is bonded, you wouldn’t even be able to date anymore.”

“There’s worse things out there than to be bonded to my best friend, Pete.” Johnny leaned over and lay a very sweet, very chaste kiss on the Omega’s lips. “You want me to stay the night tonight? We could watch bad shark movies and if you feel up to it, you could tell me more about your mate.” 

“I could handle a bad shark movie.” Peter decided and the, ‘I can’t handle talking more about my mate’ went unspoken between them. “Thank you, Johnny. You’re-- you’re a good Alpha.”

“We’ll figure this out, Pete.” the Alpha tried hard to keep the worry from his tone and from his scent as he offered Peter another bite of rice. “I promise, okay? We’ll figure it out.” 

***************

***************

It was easier after talking with Johnny. 

Or maybe not easier, because nothing was easier and everything was still miserable but it was… it was less after talking with Johnny. Being able to say that he was mated, that he was bonded and in love with his Alpha was a relief and some days Peter felt like maybe he was edging towards coping. 

Out of all his friends, Johnny would be the one not to ask questions, the one to simply accept what he was told and move on from it. Peter didn’t have to try and justify how he’d fallen in love in what everyone thought was two weeks, he didn’t have to explain the nightmares or why it was taking so long to recover. Johnny was relieved just to know and in the days following the Alpha’s platonic proposal, Peter found himself hiding a little less, withdrawing a little less, being numb just a little less now that he knew someone had at least a piece of the truth. 

So one day when Mary Jane stopped by with arms full of groceries and that patented, beautiful smile that promised everything would be okay, Peter actually opened the door before she had to use her key and when the pretty Omega quietly suggested they all go out for dinner to celebrate Gwen’s recent promotion, Peter actually agreed. 

“Really?” Mary Jane’s green eyes widened in delight. “Pete! She’ll be so happy, oh my gosh! Everyone’s going and we’ll have so much fun, it will be just like old times!” 

Nothing would ever be just like old times and MJ didn’t mean anything by it of course, so Peter swallowed back the urge to flinch and run and pasted a focused, cheerful smile on his face as she badgered him into the shower to get clean and fussed through combing his hair back out of his eyes and exclaimed loudly over the state of his clothing before finally settling on something that hung at least somewhat flattering on Peter’s still too thin frame. 

It was almost worth the mild panic attack over being out in public to see the way Harry grinned at him and to hear the excited whoop as Gwen flung herself into Peter’s arms and tried to squeeze the life from him. The Alpha was gorgeous tonight, dressed up and glammed out with hair done and jewelry sparkling and smile lit to mega watt as she screeched in excitement about her new job and all the perks and the uptick in her bank account and how happy she was to be celebrating with all her friends.

“Alright?” Johnny pressed close for a long hug and murmured into Peter’s ear, crooning comfortingly when Peter clung a little too tight. “Hard to be out with everyone?” 

“Dunno the last time we did this.” Peter’s smile was practiced and forced, his tone purposefully cheerfully and eyes wide to combat the exhaustion sinking in around his nerves. He’d forgone the usual several sleep aids today so he’d be awake and present for Gwen’s big night but after so long dependent on the pills he still felt slow, lethargic, as if the entire world was moving just a half step too fast and he couldn’t quite keep up. 

“You need to leave, you let me know.” the Alpha murmured and Peter nodded gratefully before pulling away. 

The evening wasn’t all bad. Someone popped the cork on a bottle of champagne and Peter nearly cracked his glass when he jumped, applause and the Happy Birthday chorus from further back in the restaurant abruptly brought to mind the fact that Peter didn’t even know his Alphas birthday and he had to clear his throat several times to get rid of the sorrow that clouded up behind his eyes. 

The evening wasn’t all bad, he managed to laugh a few times over Gwen’s hilarity and the champagne ticked not unpleasantly and what little Peter ate tasted expensive going down. 

The evening wasn’t all bad.

The worst moment came as Harry finished giving Gwen a toast, glasses raised and smiles bright as he congratulated their friend on her promotion, promised to definitely take advantage of the discounts she was going to get as senior staff and teased the other Alpha about finally moving out of her tiny apartment and into a real place like a real adult-- 

---the worst moment came just then, when Peter was struggling to stay focused amid all the noise and all the chatter, anxiety doubling up beneath his chest and making it hard to focus, his head swimming with all the sensory input after months of self imposed isolation and drug dulled hours--

--the worst moment came as the Alpha at the table next to them got to his knees and opened a ring box with a flourish, showing off a diamond glinting beneath the festive lights as he professed his love for his Omega in deep tones and flowery phrases, promising to love her forever, promising to cherish her forever, promising infinity if she would be his. 

And that was the very worst moment, as the suppressants and blockers bled from Peter’s system abruptly to make way for soul deep grief that burst sour and spoiled into the air, lavender and honeysuckle tinging bright for just a second before it drowned beneath the weighted black of sheer despair and Johnny turned to his side and vomited onto the floor as the scent of hopelessness and fear rolled from the Omega and poisoned the atmosphere in the room.

Gwen gagged and Harry had to turn away as desperate Omega clogged their senses and and fogged their mind and Mary Jane reached out for Peter with a frightened cry but the Omega was already on his feet and running away, stumbling over his feet and knocking into tables and he tried to get outside and away. 

The cabbie had seen his fair share of compromised passengers, but tonight he thanked his lucky stars he was a Beta and only partly susceptible to the misery hanging around the half coherent Omega in his back seat. The scent was still potent enough to make him nauseous though, and when they finally made it to the apartment building and the distraught Omega stumbled out, the Beta turned his sign off for a few minutes and lurched from the cab so he could try and breathe again. 

The bottle of sleeping pills rattled in Peter’s hands as he tried to open it, the cap tearing off and medication scattering everywhere alongside the pain pills he’d tried to open just a minute before and Peter stared at the mess in horror for a full minute before another wave of sickness hit him hard and he went down to his knees, pushing his forehead into the floor and screaming. 

Across town, May grabbed for her phone when it rang with Peter’s number, ignoring the missed calls from Harry, from Gwen, from Johnny and Mary Jane so she could ask, “Peter? Sweetheart are you alright? What’s going on? What’s going on?!” 

“I miss my mate.” Peter was sobbing, choking, the words muffled because he couldn’t manage to lift his head long enough to talk clearly. “Auntie, I miss my mate. I miss my Alpha. I want to go home. I want to go home.” 

And May slid down the wall to sit on the floor, phone pressed close to her ear and hand over her eyes as she cried right along with her nephew. 

I want to go home. 

Oh sweetheart, I know. I know. 

I’m so so sorry. 

So so sorry.

******************

SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE CHAPTER

Hey! We broke 160k with this chapter which makes MTW officially my second longest single fic after PH! And we aren’t done yet! Holla!

Also, for anyone who wants to know, there is a very specific reason why we are only seeing Peter’s side of the story right now, but once we start seeing Wade’s side of the story, it will all make sense!

******************

@ships-galore @ceealaina @izziebladez @cwar1864 @hausoffro @lookuplaughing @tonystarkisanangel @multishippinglife @girlnic @iam93percentstardust @water-colouredmemories @paranormalmoonlight5 @igotloki @moosette05 @wayward-student-philosopher @kaz-brekkers-gloves @atomicfandombomb @ricecakeandhoney @ardatlily @fawnandgays @bluedreamdino @bibbarnes @blackstar1602 @hi-inevitable-im-deadpool @scientifically-lesbian-jesus @the-pagely-gun-slinger @oshuncheyenne @the-dragonwolf-den @pumpkin-spidey @sozvuchiy @cappunico @tired-dragons01 @chiby-chan @ahumoki0 @kanizsacollage @tulipsnbigcats @hiddenaurora @notchronicle24 @marvels-gurl @iridescent-idiot @badndbourgeoisie @eversomniator @local1dreamer @loveisblindwade  @ssssssssssssssssssssslytherin @theunwantedomega

[tisfan]

Title: A Thousand Words Written by: @tisfan 3023 Square: S5 Tony Stark/T’challa Rating: teen and up Triggers/warnings: none Tags: were creatures, Tony Stark Does What He Wants, Wakanda,  Created for: @tonystarkbingo Word count: 1897 Summary: Tony knows he’s not supposed to cross the border, but the call of a prize winning photograph is strong. When he finds his subject, things are more than they appear...

Fic for the Photographer / werecreature mood board

 “And how am I supposed to know where the Wakanda border is,” Tony Stark, award winning photographer, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, and self-proclaimed major annoyance, demanded. 

The guide only gave him one of those insufferable looks. “You will know,” he said. “And you must not venture over the border. Those who go to Wakanda often get sick. The disease will take its toll on your mind and body. If you even come back at all.”

Tony had used his considerable money and influence getting this far. One of his colleagues -- and his most loathed rival, if you wanted to pick nits -- had spotted a rare black panther. Keeping in mind that panthers were not, in fact, a real species at all, and Justin Hammer had all the keen insights of a brick, Tony was doubtful.

But the pictures of the great cat fleeing into the jungle had garnered national attention.

And Tony could take better pictures than ones of a blurry black cat. It might not even have been black, just bad lighting.

Whatever.

The point was, a melanistic tiger was a worthy photo subject, especially given how endangered tigers were, and that Tony could shine a spotlight -- metaphorically speaking -- on the species through some really good photos.

The problem was the creature seemed to live around the northern end of Lake Turkana. Which bordered on Wakanda. And Wakandans were very unwelcoming to visitors. Given that most of the rest of the continent had been invaded by northern Europeans and stripped of their rights and resources, and Wakanda had been spared that fate, Tony didn’t really blame them.

But that did mean that they wouldn’t give him permission to enter their country on a wild cougar chase.

He didn’t even get a meeting with the Wakandan ambassador himself; his message went through intermediaries, and all he got back was a no. No explanation or apologies. Just. no.  

Tony didn’t take no for an answer; he never had. It was both his best quality and his most annoying one.

He was going to get those pictures, with or without the Wakandans’ permission.

Of course, it would be easier if he could find the panther on the southern side of its territory. The Kenyan government had been all but falling over itself to accommodate him. Well, he’d have to hope.

Or sneak across.

“Why isn’t there any coffee from Wakanda,” Tony wondered, changing the subject. The guide wasn’t going to be going with him. Wildlife photo shoots were almost as dangerous as wartime shoots, and no one who could avoid it wanted to be that close to animals that might look at you like you were a snack. (Wartime photography was more dangerous, Tony knew for a fact, after spending three months as a prisoner of Ten Rings. If nothing else, a large cat wasn’t cruel. Just hungry. It wasn’t worth the cat’s time to keep Tony alive. If he was going to be kitty kibble, it would be over quickly, and he wouldn’t wake up from nightmares for more than four years now.) Tony’s mouth kept going without conscious input from his brain, because that’s what it did. “Kenya AA is some of the best coffee in the world. Burundi is an excellent bean. Why-- is there single source Wakanda bean?”

The guide gave Tony a condescending look. “The Wakandans do not grow coffee,” he said.

“Waste,” Tony muttered. “Well, I’ll stay out of their territory. No coffee, now that’s a hardship.” He would know Wakanda borders by all the sleeping guards. Got it.

*

He recalled the conversation, looking down at the grass. He didn’t know much about grass, really, except that it was green (usually) and growing on the ground (primarily) and that sometimes people made a fuss about how long it was in the yard.

You will know the Wakanda border when you see it.

Yeah, okay, so why didn’t anyone bother to mention the grass was fucking purple? You’d think that would be a relatively easy thing to say. Purple grass means do not trespass here. 

And it wasn’t just purple, Tony noted, kneeling. It was glowing. Very faintly, in the growing darkness, but it did make the small area very, very noticable.

Probably more so at night than during the day. Purple grass, it could be a thing, right?

Unfortunately for the purple grass, the damn panther had been seen-- well, just on the other side of that hill. Tony’d spotted it out in the plains, running along after some long-legged deer. Antelopes. Whatever. Probably not a gnu, except that Tony wouldn’t know what a gnu looked like if it bit him. 

He’d gotten a few action shots, but even with the telephoto lense, he really hadn’t gotten any good, personal shots.

He was just going to have to ignore the guide and cross over the border. Right? Wouldn’t hurt anything. In, take some pictures, out. No one had to know.

Stepping into Wakanda territory shouldn’t have felt like taking a step on the moon, but somehow, it sort of did.

Everything seemed softer, more natural, better. Fresher. Tony was obviously being influenced by the mythos and mystery that surrounded the place. Stupid, primitive monkey brain. He ignored the sense of awe and foreboding and crept toward the jungle.

He’d seen the great cat enter the trees, dragging its kill-- surely it would be too occupied with its meal to notice him. Animals didn’t hunt for sport, and eating an already killed and tasty gazelle was a better use of calories than catching one scrawny human photographer whose muscle tissue was flavored by cheeseburgers and kale smoothies.

He tugged on the night vision goggles, which brightened the landscape up considerably, and it wasn’t long before he saw the cat, laying on the branch of a tree, overseeing a small clearing. Tony was just to the edge of the woods and found himself a blind spot to sit, upwind of the great cat, before he noticed--

There were already people in that clearing, sitting outside of a low tent. One was kneeling near the gazelle, the other was poking at a small box that looked very much like a microwave, but couldn’t be, because no one dragged a microwave out into the jungle, did they?

Tony turned his camera carefully; with people nearby he had to be even more careful about making noise. A cat might be evaded. People were predation hunters. If they thought he’d desecrated their country or something, they would track him down.

One woman, one girl. The cat was watching them, and they obviously knew it was there. They were speaking a language that Tony didn’t know, and had never heard. But they were addressing some of their remarks to the cat.

Maybe that was it, Tony decided. Some cultures raised hunting dogs, or falcons, and those animals, over time, had grown into different colors and sizes that arose in nature. Look at the black lab, to the pekinese, to the dachshund. No one would think they all originally came from wolves. The black panther could be nothing more than a specially trained domesticated cat.

Which would be fascinating, but he’d have to consider very, very carefully if he wanted to publish those pictures, since it would be immediately obvious that he’d trespassed to get them. Didn’t matter. He’d decide later. Pictures now. He would be no sort of photographer at all if he let the opportunity pass him by. 

Tony took dozens of pictures; of the two women, one with black hair, the other with white, but both beautiful. Of the cat, lounging in the tree. Of the dead gazelle, neck neatly snapped but unmarred by the cat’s teeth otherwise.

Finally, whatever meal the one woman was cooking was done, and she said something to the other -- the smells were amazing. Tony’s stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten in a while, but he didn’t dare even try to get one of his granola bars out.

He focused on the meal. One, two… three. Three plates. The woman hesitated, sighed, and then made a fourth plate.

Tony blinked, then realized to his horror, that the cat was-- 

Coming right at him.

Tony took several pictures by reflex alone, which is the only reason why, later, he could convince himself that he hadn’t gone insane.

“You may as well come to dinner,” the cat-- the CAT? Said, walking toward him, body moving, and then shifting up onto two legs, and finally, a man stood there in front of him, noble and strong and pure and-- smiling?

“Tony Stark. I should have known you would not be so easily disuaded.”

Tony blinked and looked up at the man. There was something cat-like about him in his grace and figure. Very long, dexterous fingers reached down. “Come on up out of there. We’ve known you were there, the whole time. Do not think you can sneak up on the tribe of the Panther God. One of these days, it will get you into trouble.”

Tony reached for the man’s hand, not entirely sure if he was dreaming, or hallucinating in the last moments of his life. 

“You know me?”

“I am T’challa,” the man said. “You requested an audience with me, to plead your case. Of course I know who petitions me.”

“Your majesty,” Tony said. And then, because his brain was still running full cycle, he blurted out-- “You’re like, a werecat?”

T’challa scoffed, and the girl behind him made an even ruder noise. “No. We are not cursed monsters, like in your horror movies,” T’challa said. “It is a gift from the gods.”

“I don’t believe in God,” Tony said automatically.

“That’s all right, Mr. Stark,” the girl said, bringing a mug of something fragrant to drink. “God doesn’t believe in you either.”

“What happens now?”

“Now? Now you drink, and you have dinner, and after dinner, we will return you across the border,” T’challa said. He pressed the cup into Tony’s hand, and there was something in his eyes that didn’t allow for refusal. “You will, unfortunately, contract one of the jungle fevers. You will wake up in a few days, and you will have forgotten all about this night. You have seen nothing. You will remember nothing.”

“What--”

“It’s that, or we could kill you,” the girl said.

“Shuri--”

“I’m just saying, there are options.”

“But I--” Tony protested. 

“We are not stealing your memories,” T’challa said, and led him over to the fire. “We are only taking back that which you first stole from us. It is fair, and right, and you will never miss it.”

It was fair.

But-- the things he’d seen, that he’d photographed. They couldn’t be lost. And maybe they wouldn’t be. His camera uploaded automatically every ninety minutes. If he could just delay, the pictures would be on a Stark satellite and then downloaded to his home network. 

“All right,” he said. “Dinner, and you can tell me about your gods.”

When Shuri rolled her eyes, Tony added, “Does it matter? I won’t remember it anyway. What possible harm can it do for me to know, just for tonight?”

T’challa laughed, warm and rich and appealing. “You are a stubborn man,” he said. “I like that. Sit, share a meal, and listen to our tales.”

Ninety minutes…

Surely, the stories would take ninety minutes.

[n3rdybird]

Marry in Haste, Repent at Leisure

So guys, this started with a prompt for @writemarvelousthings‘s Marvelous Writing Challenge.  It got a little out of hand, and I’m thinking mini series.  So please, enjoy!

Em’s Marvelous Writing Challenge Prompt

“She’s young, fertile and from a good family.  What more do you need to know?”

Marvel Victorian AU

Tony Stark x Reader

Chandeliers sparkled as women in their finest dresses swirled around in bright colors, tittering behind their fans as they gossiped.  Men stood in groups, talking business or the latest hunts while keeping their cravats straight and their vests uncreased.  It was a grand affair, the gala ball hosted by Sir Justin Hammer.  

You were off to the side, surrounded by chirping girls as they discussed fashion.  It’s not that you didn’t care for fashion, your navy dress trimmed with delicate lace and pearls was a testament to that.  But would it kill someone to talk about something other than the newest brocades from Italy?

“Y/N?” a voice broke into your thoughts. You looked up to see Marjorie, daughter of landed gentry.  She wasn’t nobility, but her family had amassed quite a bit of wealth with their land, thus her family and in turn she, was always present at social gatherings.  And being that her family lived near your family's manor at Esswick, you two were good friends.

“I’m terribly sorry, what was that?” you asked, taking a sip of your wine.

The other girls laughed as Marjorie huffed and rolled her eyes in jest.  She was used to you finding solace in your thoughts.

“I asked if your parents have said anymore on a potential suitor?”

“Nothing they have told me. I trust my parents to make a good match,” you fibbed, the idea of marriage to a stranger appalling to you.  But, if it got you out from under the thumb of your overbearing mother, marriage couldn’t be all bad.

“I’ve heard Sir Hammer has been prowling about?  New money,” one of the other girls sniffed, disapprovingly.

“But (Y/N), you shouldn’t be put off.  Surely he’d be a good match for you.  Or maybe even you Marjorie.” another cut in.  You held your tongue, giving them a demure smile.

“Of course, it is a compliment for a self-made man to put forth his suit.  I’m sure all of you have your own potential husbands lined up,” you said sweetly, before leaving the girls with a curtsy.  You heard Marjorie hide a snort behind her fan, before catching up with you, tucking her arm in yours.

“Did you see their faces?” she giggled.

“I can only imagine, if they even could comprehend it.  The two aren’t known for their wit,” you said as you and your friend strolled around the ballroom.

“I didn’t know you were a champion of Sir Hammer,” she said, nodding to where the host was currently entertaining a large group of nobles.  You glanced over at him, hiding your face when he sent you a smile.

“It’s not so much that I care for him, but I loathe people who can’t see past stations.”  You didn’t know much about your host Sir Justin Hammer, but he was making waves in the social circles.  His father had been landed gentry like Marjorie, but Justin had been awarded a baronet for his achievements for the military.  

Being the daughter of a Marquess, and thus being close to the border, military strength was something your father prided himself.  Which is why the rumors of a match between yourself and Lord Hammer was more than gossip.  Lord Hammer was lower than your family in standing, but his popularity with the crown could not be ignored.

“His Grace, Duke Anthony Stark of Ironport, accompanied by Lady Natasha Romanoff and Colonel James Rhodes.”

You and Marjorie turned to see the smartly dressed duke with a vibrant red head on his arm.  On her other side was the dashing Colonel Rhodes, retired from the military after an injury.  He had a cane, but he didn’t lean on it too heavily, a testament to his strength.

Everyone seemed to gravitate to the newest arrivals.

“His Grace Lord Stark seems to have a fondness for redheads,” your friend said, noting the duke’s company.

“Hm?” you said, distracted by the bravado surrounding the duke. He seemed to be the life of the party, as everyone clamored to gain his ear.

“Lord Stark, he was once betrothed to Lady Potts, before she married Sir Hogan.  She also has red hair,” Marjorie explained.

Ah, you remembered that.  The betrothal and subsequent break happened a few years ago.  Now Lord Stark was still unmarried, and seemed to never wish to.  The Lady Romanoff was a widowed countess and quite the beauty.  Though gossips were quick to whisper about her previous husband's untimely death.

“Colonel Rhodes!” Marjorie called out, catching the eye of the handsome soldier.

“Colonel Rhodes is a good friend of my father's, let me introduce you,” she explained quietly before herding you over to him.

“Lady Marjorie, wonderful to see you,” he said cordially, kissing her proffered hand.  “How is your father?”

“He's doing well, thank you for asking.”  She pulled you forward.

“This is my very good friend Lady (Y/N)(Y/L/N), daughter to the Marquess of Esswick.”

You held your hand out, and Rhodes kissed it.

“I've met your father before, he's a good man.  But I've never seen you before.”

“My mother was quite adamant about sequestering me until my entrance to society.”

Marjorie tried to keep her opinion of your mother off her face.

“Oh yes, the Marchioness is firm in her tutelage. Dance, music, poetry, embroidery-”

“Dance? Music? Is she wanting to marry off a daughter or a dancing monkey?” a voice snarked.

You bristled under the scrutiny, and turned to face Anthony Stark.

“I’d like to meet a monkey who could learn the steps to the waltz cotillion. Maybe then, we ladies could have a competent partner,” you said without thinking.

The Duke's companions laughed at the barb, and you internally blanched. If your parents had heard you, they would keep you locked up until they married you off to first suitor who asked, suitability be damned.

You snuck a glance at the duke, hoping you had not offended him.  He was frowning, but it did not reach his eyes.

“Well then, I must endeavor to dance with you, if your previous partners have left you wanting,” Anthony mused.

“Your Grace, I see you have finally arrived,” Lord Hammer said, pushing his way into the small group.

“Apologies for the late arrival. It was only earlier today that I remembered your ball was today. So many engagements, you know?”

Justin Hammer clenched his jaw at the slight, but smiled.

“Of course, we are pleased you were able to attend.”

He turned to you, giving you and Marjorie a bow.

“Ladies,” he said, deliberately snubbing Lady Romanoff.  She raised a brow, but said nothing, leaning over to whisper something into Stark’s ear, causing him to laugh loudly.

“Lady (Y/N), the waltz is about to begin. Might I ask if you would be my partner?”

Your reply was cut off by the duke.

“Actually Hammer, the lady and I were about to dance. You can get in line, behind me.” he said, reaching for your hand.

"I'm sure you are used to such by now."

He tucked your hand into the crook of his arm and led you to the dance floor.

“Was that necessary?” you hissed, as the two of you took your places on the dance floor.

He was nodding to someone off the dance floor, but returned his attention to you when you spoke.

“Hm? Did you not want to dance?”

“For you to step on the toes of our host.  If you loathe him so much, why did you bother to show up, your Grace?

“Anthony, or Tony,” he replied as the two of you drifted around the dancefloor.  You had to admit, the Duke of Ironport was a fantastic dancer, much better than the other men you had partnered with.

“Why did you come, Anthony?” you asked, testing his given name on your tongue.  You weren't going to call him by his nickname, it seemed far too intimate.

He shrugged as best as he could while dancing.

“A party, beautiful women, and if I get the opportunity to put Hammer in his place, I'd consider it a good night.”

“A man of simple tastes, I'm not surprised,” you scoffed.  It was as you heard from gossip. Anthony Stark may be Duke of Ironport, and the most sought after bachelor in the country, but his personality left much to be desired.  Scathing hatred of people he deemed lesser, flippant regard for anyone or anything other than himself, and decidedly not who you wanted to dance with.  Even if your mother was most likely faint from the idea that her daughter was dancing with a Duke.

Tony could feel the tension in your body, as if you wanted to be the furthest thing from him.

“Are you sweet on Lord Hammer? I assure you, you could do better,” he said offhand.

“You mean someone like you?” you snarked.

Tony’s eyes widened at the bite of your tone.

“Well, I'm not one for marriage, but if you wanted to meet me later-”

The sound of your slap echoed throughout the room.

Your hand shook as you stared at what you had done.  A red mark was forming across the Duke’s face.  The other dancers had stopped along with the music.

You had slapped the Duke of Ironport. Slapped the most powerful man in the room, the most powerful man in the country aside from the King.  You felt your face heat up as you contemplated your escape.

With a quick curtsey, and an “excuse me your grace,” you fled the room, eager to get away from the stares.

“It seems the Lady of Esswick is not fond of my dancing skills,” Tony said with a laugh, causing the crowd to laugh along with him.  It diffused the tension in the room, as he joined Natasha, who had watched the scene with interest.

“I like her,” she said unbidden as she sipped her wine.

“Because she hit me? You wound me Nat,” he pouted, stealing her drink.  He winced at the fruity taste, handing it back to her.

“She was clearly uncomfortable dancing with you. I’m sure whatever you said to her, you deserved it,” the red head said with a grin.

Tony waved her off.

“You are cruel my Lady Widow. Where is Rhodey, he will protect me from your biting tongue.”

Natasha nodded to the library off the main ballroom.

“The colonel got dragged into the men talks," she said rolling her eyes.  Tony could understand her frustration.  Even though she ran her lands with a firm hand, without a husband, many looked down on her.

“Hopefully Hammer will have better alcohol in there,” Tony said before kissing his friend’s hand.

“Be good,” he said sternly before walking away.

Her throaty laugh followed him out of the room.

You wrung your hands, standing on the patio leading to the gardens.  You knew you only had a few moments before your mother would surely descend.

“(Y/N)(M/N)!” a shrill voice permeated the silence of the night air.  You flinched, your mother was not pleased, if the use of your middle name was any indication.

“Mother I-“

For the second time that night, a slap reverberated through the air, though this time there were no witnesses.

“You foolish child.  You dare lay your hand on a Duke? Have you gone mad?”

You gingerly touched your cheek.

“Anthony-“

“You mean his grace, the Duke of Ironport.  Where is your propriety?  What his grace must think of you?”

“Why does it matter what he thinks? He’s not a marriage prospect. And there is no love lost between the Duke and Lord Hammer.  Our host will probably put forth his suit tonight, if he hasn’t already.  Isn’t that who you wished I would marry?”

“Whatever spat is between Lord Hammer and Duke Stark is between them, but he is the Duke, the second most powerful man in the country.  If he wished it, we would be tossed aside.”

You knew, logically, your mother was correct.  But you still believed you were justified.

“I’m sorry Mother, I will beg for his forgiveness.”

“You do that.  Your father and I will have to make amends as well.”

Tony was bored.  He may be drinking his weight in scotch, but the puffed chests and cock measuring was tedious.  Most of the lords in attendance were like himself, born and bred into their world.

It was why Rhodey was considered his closest friend and confidant.  He was the son of a blacksmith. No titles or land.  No, all by his own will, James Rhodes climbed his way up to become the decorated Colonel he was today.

And that no nonsense attitude was the perfect foil to Tony.  Tony was intelligent and driven, but self absorbed and easily angered.

So it was, Tony was downing scotch and Rhodey was no where in site.  Justin Hammer was talking with some minor lord when Tony sauntered over.

“She’s young, fertile, and from a good family.  What more do you need to know?” Hammer said shrugging.

“Lady (Y/N) seems a bit, firey,” the other man said, referencing your earlier outburst.

“I can handle Lady (Y/N),” Hammer boasted.

Tony snorted.

“She’d eat you alive,” he said matter-of-fact.

Justin Hammer raised a brow.

“I’m not sure you are the best person to give advice about marriage, your Grace,” he said dryly.

Tony paused, his irritation growing.  He would not let this insignificant ass make a fool of him. He was Duke Anthony Stark, Lord of Ironport.

“I assure you, Lord Hammer, I am superior to you in all things, including marriage.”

With that he went looking for a certain Marquess.

You followed your mother back inside, searching for your father.

When you saw him talking to His Grace, you faltered.  Here it was, you were going to cause the fall of your family.  They were talking animatedly, though not angrily.

You masked your confusion and joined your mother at their side.

“Ah, this is my wife, the Marchioness of Esswick. And of course, you know my daughter, the Lady (Y/N).”

Your mother curtseyed abs you followed, keeping your eyes down.

“Your grace, I-“ you started when your father pulled you forward, taking your hand in his.

“Great news, my lovely daughter. Duke Stark has asked for your hand.  And I’ve accepted on your behalf!”

You froze, tilting your head up to see Anthony Stark smirking at you, his dark eyes boring into you.

“Congratulations, my betrothed.”

[dragonnan]

Doctor Strange: Timeline Headcanon

I’ve read quite a few articles discussing the ambiguous timeline of Doctor Strange.  Now, though I’ve watched the movie at least a dozen times, as well as all of the other Marvel films, I don’t honestly remember where there is a definitive time stamp on Doctor Strange with regards to when his origins begin.  (EDIT: on a random Reddit post someone insists that Stephen, at the start of the film, has awards from 2016.  Even so, I throw those into the same box that holds Howard the Duck and anything else that simply doesn’t quite fit... lol)

The specific clues mentioned, as I remember them and without watch the movies, again, are:

First relevant event mentioned by Stephen: Iron Man 2 (film release 2010)

First mention of Stephen Strange in-universe: Captain America Winter Soldier (film release 2014)

The first time we see Stephen, he’s a well known neurosurgeon. (film release 2016) 

In 2010, Tony Stark is more or less forced to appear before a senate sub-committee to discuss his ownership of the Iron Man tech.  In defending himself, he shows video of other attempts to recreate tech similar to his.  One, in particular, is armor created by Justin Hammer.  When the man using the tech tries to twist at the waist, in the armor, it rapidly and horribly spins too far and you hear a muffled scream.  Hammer insists that the man survived and that’s the last you hear about that man.  However, cut to the Doctor Strange film and Stephen is in his car, talking to a fellow doctor about potential, interesting, medical cases. At one point a case is proposed about a 35 year old Marine injured in an accident involving experimental armor.  Now, to avoid rehashing something that has already been addressed in articles like THIS ONE, I’ll summarize by stating that it in unequivocally NOT referring to Rhodey (vis Civil War).  And while Kevin Feige was vague about who it MAY have been, it certainly makes sense, to me, that it could have been Hammer’s unfortunate guinea pig.  So, if I go forward with that head canon, it helps resolve another issue presented with Doctor Strange.  The timeline.  SEVERAL major incidents come into play that make the timelines - especially the roughly first half hour of the film, frankly impossible if we are meant to believe they all happen in the span of a few months.   

The first, most telling one, is recovery from injuries and multiple surgeries (Stephen had a total of 7 surgeries on his hands and even if medical ethics and healing were thrown out the window, there is no way those surgeries could be crammed into even a single year).  I’d found an article (which, now, I can no longer locate) written by someone with a medical background that indicated it would take a minimum of 3 years to recovery from all of the surgeries.  Now, if I go with the headcanon that the injured marine was the one working for Hammer, it given us a timeframe that actually makes sense (sorry if this enrages purists but the 6 month timeframe is absolute bollocks).  This gives us a starting point of 2010 - meaning Stephen could conceivably have been chasing a medical miracle until 2013/14.  And now we’re into Winter Soldier timeframe and the second thing I’d mentioned at the beginning.  

Of the people targeted by Hydra, Stephen was on that list to be eliminated due to the threat he presented.  Again, on that same Reddit thread, someone mentioned that the reason for that was because “Stephen was so smart” basically.  At this point you’ll need to imagine my dubious expression.  Although it looks something like this:   

So, yeah... no.  Again, I don’t buy that.  Like, at all.  But, okay, fine, sure.  Hydra wants to not only kill off super heroes but, just to be safe, really smart doctors too.

Yuup.

But, wait, this is my headcanon so no.

Now, I do still think Stephen would have been training for a minimum of months - if not several years.  Either way the Winter Soldier reference can certainly work.  And this is where “mileage may vary”.  Personally, I prefer the idea that Stephen trained right up until 2016 - so another 3 years after his attempts at healing failed.  That means Doctor Strange covered a full 6 year period.  I know there are those who want to stick with 6 months.  To each their own.  But 6 years, for me, gives this journey so much more weight.  Plus, frankly, I love that it also opens the door to so many side stories to take place within the film and as a fanfic writer, that is a ton of fun!

[inawickedlittletown]

Walking The Wire (4/?)

Summary: Tony Stark always knew about Peter Parker. He didn’t know that Peter was going to get superpowers and become Spider-Man, but he always knew about Peter because Peter was his son.

This will span from pre-Iron Man up through the rest of the MCU (eventually including Infinity War) and will be for the most part canon compliant except where I’ve taken some liberties and interpreted canon a certain way.

Pairings: Pepper/Tony, Tony/Steve (endgame), Tony/Mary (past)

A/N: If you want me to tag you when I post new chapters let me know. This fic is also on AO3

I used Collider’s MCU timeline to stay canon and the title of this fic is an Imagine Dragons song that is just so fitting for Peter and Tony

Masterpost

Chapter Three

Peter didn’t know how Uncle Ben and Aunt May managed it, but one day after school they gave it to him. The all access pass that they had gotten him for the Stark Expo for the full year. They all had passes because they didn’t want to go alone, and Peter just knew that it must have cost a lot. Money that they really didn’t have because Peter had already resigned himself to knowing that he wouldn’t be going to the Expo. In fact, when he went and looked it up on the website there was no such thing as an all access pass. There were passes for the opening night and for the closing night and for some of the presentations but the actual Expo was free admission when it came to everything else which would have been enough for Peter even if he didn’t get to see all the cool things that everyone was excited about.

In the end, the passes were only used a few times. The night it opened, a few weeks later when both Aunt May and Uncle Ben weren’t busy, and then the night that Hammer Tech was making their presentation mostly because everyone knew he was unveiling some sort of Iron Man related project and Peter wanted to see how badly it went. He just knew that no one could replicate Iron Man.

The first time  on opening night it had been ten times better because Tony Stark had gotten out of the suit and actually talked about science and Peter had known then that he wanted to work for Stark Industries in the future. Uncle Ben had told him once that his mom had worked there before she got pregnant with him but he didn’t know much else and he didn’t think that Uncle Ben did either. Peter just knew that his mom must have been super smart to have worked for Mr. Stark and that he wanted to follow in her footsteps.

The night of the Hammer Tech presentation became entirely more interesting the moment that Iron Man arrived, but even before then Peter had been enjoying the show. Then, everything turned to chaos. Somehow, in the commotion he lost track of where he was going. Uncle Ben had bought him an Iron Man mask and Peter had been so excited to be wearing it when Iron Man showed up that he just had it on in the middle of the crowd of running people fully understanding that something bad was going on, but safe and secure behind his mask. Then, one of those things was singling him out and Peter was stupid to think that pretending to be Iron Man would keep him safe.. He was lucky when Iron Man himself showed up and shot the droid away. He even thanked Peter and for a moment Peter felt like he was important, but the feeling faded away as the realization of what had just happened settled on him.

Moments after that Uncle Ben found him and Uncle Ben actually picked him up and they ran for it with the rest of the crowd. Somehow they ended up in a car that wasn’t a Taxi or for that matter theirs but someone was driving them away. While Aunt May looked him over, he tried to tell them about Iron Man but they were too distracted to listen.  

The next day on the news they showed how much had been destroyed of the Expo -- basically of it -- but they confirmed the bad guy was dead and that the accomplice, Justin Hammer, would be going to jail. Tony Stark and his friend Colonel James Rhodes were receiving awards.

“He’s a good man that Tony Stark,” Uncle Ben said.

“Of course he is,” Peter said, “he’s Iron Man.”

Peter didn’t see his aunt and uncle share a look, but he felt May run her hands through his hair.

---

He wasn’t dying. Somehow despite how much Fury and Shield had been responsible for his lack of dying, he was solely a consultant to them when it came to the Avengers Initiative due to Natasha Romanoff’s view of him. Tony pretended that it didn’t matter when in all actuality it left him a little cold mostly because Natasha had been almost like a friend and yet even up close she hadn’t wanted Tony and didn’t understand that he was Iron Man. Either way, he knew that the Avengers wasn’t ever going to happen the way Fury wanted it and that Tony would be included when it mattered because he couldn’t not be.

There were other things that didn’t include Shield to worry about. Pepper had quit being his CEO, but not officially, and Tony was looking forward to convincing her to keep the job. Howard had provided a new element to him and suddenly the arc reactor tech was all that Tony could think about because clean energy was the future and it was all within his grasp and he needed Pepper at his side in every way possible to make it happen.

When he go back home, he found both Pepper and Rhodey at his place. They were looking at the mess he’d made and yet they were both there.

“So you were dying and you started giving your stuff away,” Rhodey said and shook his head. “You keyed me to the suits. You let me take that suit -- made sure I took that suit.”

Tony shrugged. “If it couldn’t be me, then it was going to be you,” Tony said. “You were getting the suits and Pepper--”

“Was getting the company,” Pepper said. “You had it all worked out and didn’t think we’d want to help you or be here for you?”

“That was the whole point. No one could help me and there was nothing to be done that I hadn’t tried and I didn’t want those looks of pity and sadness and so I didn’t tell you. It was easier. It made things easier.”

“On you, maybe,” Rhodey said, “and I don’t think it actually helped. Did you think about us at all? About how we would feel?”

Tony had. It had crossed his mind time and time again. So had Peter and what it would do to him when he was given Tony’s company and his trust fund but there was no Tony left for him to know.

“I’m sorry,” Tony said, “but this was hard enough without the two of you knowing.”

---

“The first one has to be in New York,” was what Tony said after they decided to start building new Stark buildings with the arc reactor tech. They would be prototypes to spread out over the entire world in part of give Tony landing ground for Iron Man business and also because the company needed the infrastructure.

Tony had spent a long time after he was no longer dying working out exactly what his father had wanted to do when it came to clean energy and then improving on it. He had also looked into the new projects that Pepper had taken on for them and pushed until she remained CEO and he could take a role in research and development which meant that stock for SI was up and better yet, so were their profits.

Tony designed the building himself and made sure that the top floor would be Iron Man friendly and Tony Stark friendly. Pepper only kissed him and rolled her eyes when she saw all his plans. Tony was still a little in awe of how Pepper hadn’t just written their kiss after the fight at the Expo off as a result of the two of them not dying and instead turned it into an actual relationship. It was something new for him, but it was good.

“Are you planning on moving to New York City any time soon?” she asked.

The truth was that he was. He wasn’t in direct contact with Peter or even his aunt and uncle but he was certainly keeping track of them. When he had time he flew out to Queens to see him from afar and sent gifts and monetary help when he felt it was necessary. Tony looked out for them and he wanted to be even closer. May was still in contact with Pepper and she sent along stories and pictures and all kinds of things that Tony appreciated because it had such a nice touch when it came from May and yet it was starting to not be enough.

“I think I should,” Tony said.

Pepper eyed him. “We run SI from California,” she stated.

Their relationship didn’t come without hurdles, but Tony had never felt the way he felt about Pepper about anyone else before. She was everything and Tony truly loved her. It was easy to love her and to see how much better his life was when she was in it.

“I won’t live there all the time,” Tony said, “but I’d like to try out the new building for myself and I’d be closer to Peter. I think -- I think it’s time he knew who he is.”

Just as everything was being settled to start building, Tony got a call from Fury. Tony had seen like everyone else, the footage of The Hulk and The Abomination fighting it out and he had wondered about Shield’s involvement in the whole thing so it wasn’t too much of a surprise that he was asked to go on a recruiting mission even if he didn’t understand why they weren’t recruiting The Hulk. Tony had looked into Bruce Banner and he was impressed by the other man because he was a genius in his own right and a far better recruit than the one that Shield wanted.

In the end, General Ross didn’t go for the offer and Tony didn’t think it was a huge loss. A part of him was offended that Blonsky would be asked to join the non-existent team that he was only a consultant of. Later Rhodey laughed at him when he explained what happened.

“I think they sent you in to botch the deal, Tony, I don’t think anyone would have wanted that guy. I guess even Shield has it’s politics.”

“Don’t I know it,” Tony muttered.

Chapter Five

[rosiep66]

"IRON MAN 2" (2010) Review

”IRON MAN 2” (2010) Review I must say that I am grateful to Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) showrunner Kevin Feige and the filmmakers of ”IRON MAN 2”.  I am grateful that they only waited two years to make this sequel to the 2008 hit film, “IRON MAN”, instead of three years or more. But even if they had made the movie more than two years after the original film, I believe the movie proved to be worth any wait. Some IRON MAN fans and film critics had expressed the opinion that ”IRON MAN 2” was inferior to the original 2008 movie. I certainly feel differently. I believe that this movie was superior to ”IRON MAN”. Mind you, this new film had a few flaws. One, I was baffled by Tony Stark’s reluctance to join S.H.I.E.L.D. I had assumed after the appearance of the organization’s leader, Nick Fury, in the original film’s Easter egg sequence that he was eager to join. Even Tony’s appearance in 2008’s ”THE INCREDIBLE HULK” seemed to hint this. So what happened? Is it possible that screenwriter Justin Theroux failed to see the last ”HULK” film? One would think so.  It took me another year to discover that “THE INCREDIBLE HULK” is supposed to be set a few days or a few weeks after the events of this film.  Only . . . why?  Why did Feige make this convoluted move with the franchise’s timeline?  I found it so confusing.  The movie’s score, like the 2008 film, sucked.  As much as I was impressed by Matthew Libatique’s cinematography, I must admit that I did not find it as impressive as his photography in the 2008 film. But I will discuss this subject in greater detail, later.  Nor was I that impressed by Tony’s initial behavior toward Natasha Romanoff aka the Black Widow.  I found it slightly sexist and somewhat tacky.  Even Pepper Potts’ snarky response that he would open himself up to a sexual harassment lawsuit could not erase ugly taint that surrounded his comment. ”IRON MAN 2” may not have been perfect; but as I had stated earlier, I believe that it is superior to the first film. Do not get me wrong. I loved ”IRON MAN”. I still do. But in an article I had written about some of the Summer 2008 movies, its plot struck me as simple and a little unoriginal. I cannot say the same about its sequel. Thanks to Theroux and director Jon Farveau, ”IRON MAN 2” focused upon the consequences of Tony Stark becoming and admitting to being Iron Man in the last film. During the six months since the end of the last film, Iron Man’s actions as a superhero has allowed him to maintain world peace. His actions have also attracted the attention of a U.S. Senate committee, led by Senator Stern, who demanded that Tony release the Iron Man technology for military application. Stark refused, claiming his competitors are years away from successfully recreating the technology. But more trouble seemed to plague Tony. The palladium core inside the miniaturized arc reactor that he had created to power his Iron Man armor and prevent the shrapnel from a disastrous Afghanistan trip in the last film from reaching his heart . . . was slowly poisoning his blood system. Foreknowledge of a possible early death led Tony to acts of excessive and dangerous behavior – including re-instituting the Stark Expo first initiated by his father back in the 1970s, appointing his personal assistant Pepper Potts as the new CEO of Stark Industries, in and participating in the Monaco Grand Prix, at the Circuit de Monaco. It is in Monaco where Tony has his first encounter with Ivan Vanko, a Bratva member and Russian physicist who happened to be the son of another physicist and former Stark Industries employee, Anton Vanko, who was fired by Howard Stark and deported back to the Soviet Union. Anton Vanko had also worked on the original plans of the arc reactor with Stark Sr., but the plans remained in the hands of Stark Enterprises. Vanko Sr.’s death at the beginning of the movie sent Ivan into a spiral of grief, leading him to create his own suit containing an arc reactor. Vanko used his new suit to attack Tony at Monaco. The attack attracted the attention of another weapons industrialist named Justin Hammer, an arch-rival of Tony’s. Hammer arranged Vanko’s escape from jail and recruited the Russian physicist to design drones similar to the Iron Man armor for the Stark Expo. Tony also has to deal with the return of S.H.I.E.L.D. in his life. Unbeknownst to him, the organization’s leader, Nick Fury had assigned one of his agents to infiltrate Stark Enterprises to assess Tony as a possible agent. His spy turned out to be Tony and Pepper’s new assistant, Natalie Rushman aka Natasha Romanoff. Although Fury has become reluctant to recruit Tony for membership in S.H.I.E.L.D., he managed to provide vital materials to the industrialist to allow him to develop a safe element for his arc reactor implant that also provides superior power. One would begin to wonder if the screenwriters had dumped one too many plotlines in the movie’s script. Some critics have complained that the movie possessed one too many villains. I would disagree. ”IRON MAN 2” simply had a complex plot that did not – in my opinion – struck me as difficult to follow. In fact, I believe that the plot’s complexity allowed the movie to be superior to the 2008 film. As for the number of villains, there were two – Ivan Vanko and Justin Hammer. ”IRON MAN” also had two villains. Robert Downey Jr. reprised his role as Tony Stark aka Iron Man. I am trying to think of something to say about his performance. But what is there to say? He was magnificent as always by skillfully portraying every aspect of Tony’s personality – both the good and the bad. Yes, Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark was a charming, caring, brilliant and strong-willed man. But he was also narcissist, egotistical, and somewhat self-centered. This is a man who used his Iron Man technology to bring about world peace, instead of using it for personal gain and who had enough trust in his personal assistant to name her as the new CEO of his company. Yet, this same man resorted to alcohol to escape from his demons and was thoughtless enough to give his new CEO strawberries as a gift – completely forgetting that she is allergic to the fruit. Downey Jr.’s performance as Stark seemed to be among the best comic book hero portrayals I have ever seen on the silver screen . . . back in 2010. In one of the last scenes in ”IRON MAN”, Tony said the following to his personal assistant, Virginia “Pepper” Potts: ”You know, if I were Iron Man, I'd have this girlfriend who knew my true identity. She'd be a wreck, 'cause she'd always be worrying that I was going to die, yet so proud of the man I'd become. She'd be wildly conflicted, which would only make her more crazy about me.” In ”IRON MAN 2” Pepper certainly discovered how stressful her life could be as the object of affection (or desire) of a celebrated costumed hero. Gwyneth Paltrow returned to the role of Pepper Potts, Tony Stark’s personal assistant-turned-new CEO of Stark Industries. And I have to say that the actress did a skillful job of conveying the stress and anxiety that threatened to overwhelm her character. One of my favorite scenes featured a moment when Pepper’s emotions finally overwhelmed her, as she tendered her resignation in an angry tirade. As everyone knows, Marvel Entertainment had decided to replace Terrence Howard with Don Cheadle for the role of Tony’s best friend, Lieutenant-Colonel James “Rhodey” Rhodes U.S.A.F. I will not discuss the circumstances that led Cheadle to replace Howard. I will say that Cheadle gave a top notch performance as Rhodey. Do I consider him to be a better choice than Howard? No. I would say that the quality of both actors’ performances struck me as equal. Not that I find that surprising. Both Cheadle and Howard are excellent actors with a strong screen presence. I did notice that Cheadle’s sense of humor never had the opportunity to flourish, until the movie’s final scenes. And his screen chemistry with Downey Jr. did not seem as strong as the Downey Jr./Howard pairing. But he certainly did not disappoint. I must confess that I have only seen Mickey Rourke in three other movies, besides ”IRON MAN 2”. Aside from his award winning performance in ”THE WRESTLER”, I was never that impressed by him. When I had learned that he would be cast as the main villain, Ivan Vanko, I had qualms about Jon Farveau and Marvel’s decision. In the end, I found myself very impressed by his performance. He managed to portray a menacing, yet emotional personality in a suitably low-key manner. However, I could barely understand some of his lines through the thick Russian accent. It is a major pity that Marvel/Disney did not keep him around.  Sam Rockwell was as volatile as Rourke was low key. And surprisingly, his volatile performance perfectly suited his character, Tony Stark’s fellow defense contractor – Justin Hammer. What I especially enjoyed about Rockwell’s performance was his ability to inject a raging inferiority complex underneath the gregarious personality. Scarlett Johanssen had the opportunity to strut her stuff as Natalie Rushman aka Natasha Romanoff aka the Black Widow, Pepper’s new assistant and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. I must admit there were times I wondered if Johanssen’s character had a personality. It finally dawned on me that she simply possessed a no-nonsense persona that could kick ass. 

Director Jon Farveau returned as Tony’s bodyguard and chauffeur, Happy Hogan. Thankfully, he got to do a lot more in ”IRON MAN 2”, which included coming to Tony’s rescue with the Iron Man suit during Vanko’s attack during the Monaco Grand Prix, and assisting (somewhat) Natasha during the latter’s breach at Hammer Industries. Samuel L. Jackson’s role as head of S.H.I.E.L.D., Nick Fury, was increased in this second film. And all I can say is . . . thank goodness! I really enjoyed his strong screen presence and lively conversations with Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark. I got the feeling that the two actors really enjoyed working with one another (unless I happened to be wrong). Clark Gregg returned in the role of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Coulson. Not only was he his usual quiet and assuming self, but also deliciously snarky. John Sterling of ”MAD MEN” made an appearance as Tony’s father, the late Howard Stark, in old film clips viewed by Tony. Slattery’s Howard Stark struck me as lively and witty as Downey Jr.’s Tony. His performance made it easy for me to see the genesis of Tony’s own personality. And the late Gary Shandling tossed aside his usual comic persona to convincingly portray U.S. Senator Stern, a determined politician who wants the Iron Man armor in government hands. However, he was allowed a rather snarky and very subtle joke in the film's last scene. As I had stated earlier, I was not that impressed by Matthew Libatique’s cinematography in ”IRON MAN 2”. Mind you, I did not find it terrible or a travesty to the art of motion pictures. But I cannot recall viewing any fantastic airborne sequences that were featured in ”IRON MAN”. Aside from Rhodey’s arrival at the Edwards Air Force Base in the War Machine armor, the movie did not feature any daytime aerial scenes, just slightly confusing night time sequences near the beginning and the end of the film. But, as I will point out later, there was one exception. However, I found most of the film’s action sequences very exciting – especially Vanko’s attack upon Tony in Monaco; the birthday brawl between Tony and Rhodey in the Iron Man and War Machine suits; Natasha’s fight against Hammer’s security guards; and the aerial chase sequence over the Stark Expo between Iron Man and the Vanko-controlled War Machine. I must be one of the few who, to this day, still regard “IRON MAN 2″ as better than the original 2008 film.  I also regard it as one of the better films of 2010, despite its few flaws.  It would also proved to be the second to the last time in which I would truly enjoy Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of Tony Stark aka Iron Man.

[tuckinpodcast-blog]

EPISODE 3: THE LEGACY OF DOROTHY ARZNER

LISTEN: SOUNDCLOUD / ITUNES / GOOGLE PLAY

NOTES: Guess who finally typed up their script before recording? ME! No more note shuffling!

SOURCES: listed at end of transcript

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, I'm Jack, and this is Tuck In, We're Rolling: Queer Hollywood Stories. I know I mentioned that this week, we were going to talk about the sapphic Holy Trinity of Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn, but I made a new discovery while I was digging through Pride posts on tumblr, and I thought that maybe instead of talking about some big names that everyone is already familiar with, I might put off talking about actresses to focus on someone behind the camera. There isn't a whole lot of information about Golden Age lesbians and bisexual women, and I heard this name that I had never even seen before and I thought, what the heck? Let's talk about more lesbians.

So today, I'm going to introduce you to a woman named Dorothy Arzner. Maybe you've heard the name, and maybe you haven't, but she's an important woman. Here's a woman who directed sixteen movies – a run comparable to the men of the time, and twenty more than contemporary female director Kathryn Bigelow – over a career spanning from 1927 to 1943. This is the woman – the person – who invented the boom mic while directing Paramount's first talkie, launched Katharine Hepburn and Lucille Ball, and did it all while whispers of affairs with the likes of Joan Crawford floated around. In short, Dorothy Arzner was a fucking badass, but that's not even half the story.

Dorothy Arzner was born on January 3, 1897 in San Francisco. Her family moved to LA and her dad opened up a restaurant that attracted a lot of Hollywood elite – and that comes into play a little later. Arzner wanted to be a doctor – dead set on it so much that she went to the University of Southern California for it, and when World War I broke out, she went overseas to drive ambulances. I guess the experience was kind of intense, because she came back and said, “Maybe being a doctor isn't for me.” Let's pause here for a second and bask in the complete badassery. This is World War I. This is 1914, or thereabouts, and this woman is like, “Oh, I want to be a doctor and you're not gonna sway me into nursing.” This is a woman saying, “Fuck you, fuck this, I'm gonna go drive fucking ambulances at the front during a major world conflict.” I can't blame her for coming home and not wanting to be in medicine anymore, but what does she decide to do?

Be a director.

She wasn't a director at first, of course. She wanted to become a director because, in her own words, “If one was going to be in the movie business, one should be a director because he was the one who told everyone else what to do.”

Her father got into contact with William C. deMille, older brother of Cecil B., who got her a job at the Players-Lasky Corporation, which we would all come to know as Paramount Pictures. She started out as a stenographer, typing up scripts – but she was a terrible typist, so they got her out of there pretty quick. Imagine being so bad at a job that they promote you just to stop you from pecking at a typewriter – that's the life I want to live. They had her writing scripts for a little while, and then they got her into an editing room, and this is where she really starts to shine.

She edited a film called Blood and Sand in 1922, which starred our friend Rudolph Valentino. While she's working on this film, she has the brilliant idea to use stock footage of bullfighters to make the movie more believable and entertaining, and the director – a guy named James Cruze – is so impressed with her that he basically pulls her onto his permanent team, and she goes on to edit over fifty films.

So Arzner is trucking along with this editing career, but she's also starting to realize that she doesn't want to edit forever. She wants to direct, so she goes up to the heads of Paramount and she lays out her demands: let her direct a film, or she's going to leave and take her talents to Columbia, basically their direct competitor. They were like, “Uh, okay. Sure.” At this point, I've found some reports that she was already writing scripts for independent movie outfits and they were causing a lot of buzz, so I'm sure Paramount was a little nervous that they could be losing out on a lot of money. This was still the time that studios were cranking out movies left and right, turning over footage at a really crazy rate. Movies were basically turned over weekly, so they came up with stuff that was long and short, and they needed a lot of people to do it.

In 1927, Paramount hands Arzner the script for a movie called Fashions For Women. It's a silent film, kind of a comedic love story, about a cigarette girl who falls in love with a count and becomes a model. This movie does so well that they put her in charge of another movie: The Wild Party, starring Clara Bow. It's Paramount's first talkie, and it's a remake of a silent film that she had edited. Again, I want to pause and bask. Paramount Pictures gave their first talkie – a thing that could make or break a studio back in those days – to a woman who had gotten her job by demanding she be given it.

The thing about the first talkies is that the actors couldn't really move around too much because they had to stand still in front of their microphones for the sound to be captured. It was really obvious to Arzner that shooting this way was making Clara Bow act awkwardly, so Arzner gets a hold of her sound guys and helps them rig up a microphone attached to a fishing rod so that they could hold the mic up over Bow's head, out of the shot, and follow her around so that she could move and act without having to worry about being stuck in one place. If that concept sounds familiar, it's because Dorothy Arzner invented the fucking boom mic. She didn't patent the idea, but everyone is pretty much in agreement that it's her invention and give her credit for it. Another cool thing about Arzner directing the studio's first talkie is that all the male directors were like, “Woah, the post-production work on these things is way too intense – let's just sit back and let the lady deal with all the bullshit while we keep making silent movies.” So Arzner took a job that no one wanted and invented the fucking boom mic while she was at it. Could this lady get any more badass?

Of course she can.

The Wild Party is a pre-Code film, and it's a little raunchy and it's racy and it's set at a girl's college. This becomes a theme with Arzner's films – she does this wild woman thing with girls misbehaving, even after the Hays Code comes along and ruins everything. Clara Bow's star and her particular style started to fade with the coming of the 30's, so Paramount nudged Arzner into directing melodramas. So she did it – and did it really, really well. In 1930, she directs a movie called Sarah and Son, and it gets actress Ruth Chatterton an Academy Award nomination.

In 1931, we get Honor Among Lovers, and it has some big names in it: Fredric March, Claudette Colbert, Ginger Rogers. Arzner isn't messing around here. The plot is kind of hard to follow, but basically it's what would have happened if Pepper Potts went to work for Justin Hammer and then tried to go back to Tony Stark after she realized she was in love with him – but it's set during the Stock Market Crash of 1929. The movie basically puts men on blast for their greed – all these guys running around trying to collect money and women and that's their downfall.

Her movies were pretty popular – The Wild Party was the third top grossing film of 1919 – and they usually had strong female characters in them. Arzner had a way of directing women in films that showed them as real, complex people – and the studios decided to capitalize on that. She left Paramount in 1932 to freelance, and she really starts to take off from here. Since this was still the 30's and 40's, the women in her movies usually ended up happily married by the end of the film, but they were still an anomaly in Golden Age cinema. She liked to point out the unfairness of sexism and gender discrimination, and people, not too surprisingly, loved it.

She directed Katharine Hepburn in her second movie in 1933 – a film called Christopher Strong. This is the movie we get all those great images of Hepburn in pilot gear from, I'm sure you've seen it. She plays a pilot who fall in love with a married politician, and apparently she and Arzner got into it on the set quite a few times. I've seen some quotes talking about how Arzner was basically trolling around RKO and saw Hepburn up a tree in a leopard skin – I'm not even kidding – and basically just got heart eyes because Hepburn was so beautiful and Arzner didn't want to see her making Tarzan movies her whole career. Can you imagine that? Arzner is the reason we have the Katharine Hepburn we all know and love today. There isn't really any evidence that the two had an affair – but knowing what I know about Hepburn today, I wouldn't be surprised if they did.

In 1936, she launches the career of Rosalind Russel in Craig's Wife. If you're not familiar with Rosalind Russel, I highly suggest watching her in His Girl Friday, opposite Cary Grant – it's a really funny screwball comedy, and Russel is such a fast talker and she's super slick – it's great. And we have Arzner to thank for having Russel at all. Not only that, but Arzner took a script that was kinda sleazy and gross, all about a husband going fighting with his cold wife, into a movie that's begging women to become their own people.

In the 1930's we have a lot of talk about Arzner's sexuality come up. She wore trousers and suspenders – and I'm not gonna lie, she looked pretty good doing it, if I do say so – and she apparently had an affair with Joan Crawford on the sets of The Bride Wore Red and The Last of Mrs. Cheyney. It's been described as a 'fiery affair', but there apparently wasn't any ill will because in the 60's and70's, Arzner directed a bunch of Pepsi commercials with Crawford as a special favor. In 1936, she became the first female director to join the Directors Guild of America.

Then in 1940, she directs Dance Girl Dance, which is Lucille Ball's first on-screen performance. It's a screwball comedy about two burlesque dancers that end up fighting each other over a man, giving up their dreams to try and get with this guy. Maureen O'Hara plays the other burlesque dancer, and she gives the audience a dressing down about gaping at her. And this is a character who has to perform to make her way in the world, and she's not ashamed of it. There's a lot of lesbian subtext in the movie – like in all of Arzner's movies – some sly glances and the fact that Ball and O'Hara's characters really obviously want to be together but they misplace that affection onto a man.

Arzner directed her last film, First Comes Courage, in 1943. It's a pretty typical war-time story, except it's totally about a lesbian spy who runs away with a nurse after her husband dies. It wasn't nearly as commercially successful as her older films, and Arzner was dealing with a pretty serious case of pneumonia at the time – and these are all kind of agreed upon reasons why she didn't continue directing. She made a few training films for the Women's Army Corp, but after that, she was kind of done with feature films. Like I mentioned, she made some commercials with Joan Crawford, and she did some other commercials. She also went on to teach film at UCLA, where she taught – get this – Francis Ford fucking Coppola. In the 70's, she told a reporter that Louis B Mayer had killed her career by spreading the word that she was “difficult”, which is – as far as I'm concerned – Louis B Mayer's code for “very, very gay”.

Arzner lived with her partner Marion Morgan for forty years. I've found conflicting reports on whether or not Arzner was out, but I think it's pretty agreed upon that she was openly with Morgan but not necessarily publicly out. Morgan was a dancer and choreographer – she had a dance troupe called the Marion Morgan Dancers, which was mostly made up of women. They did a lot of Vaudeville work and then they were hired to do dance sequences in Hollywood films, and Morgan did a lot of choreography for Arzner. They actually met on the set of Fashions for Women which as you will remember was Arzner's first movie, and they moved in together in 1930. Again, I'm gonna pause and let that sink in. These two met and fell in love and decided to move in together – in 19-fucking-30. They lived together until Morgan died in 1971. Arzner was apparently a gardener and gushed about the roses she grew in their garden. They had beautiful parties and invited Marlene Dietrich. Arzner might have had affairs with people like Billie Burke and Alla Nazimova, but she went home every night to Marion.

Dorothy Arzner died in 1979 at the age of 82. She left behind a legacy for the women that came after her – she was a prolific director and she refused to live life on anyone else's terms. And you know, not only that, but she was a great director – not just a great female director, but a great director. You know, Dorothy Arzner gave us quality. And I think that if she was alive today to see Patty Jenkins direct Wonder Woman, and if she was alive to see that movie today, I think she would be very proud.

Thank you for listening to Tuck In, We're Rolling: Queer Hollywood Stories. This episode was written, recorded and researched by me, Jack Segreto. You can find a transcript of this episode and all of our episodes, along with some fun facts and photos, on our tumblr, tuckinpodcast.tumblr.com. You can also give us a like on Facebook at facebook.com/tuckinpodcast. We accept messages on both of those platforms, so feel free to shoot us any suggestions for show topics or comments you might have. We put out new episodes every Wednesday, and you can listen to us on SoundCloud, iTunes and Google Play, so don't forget to rate and subscribe to us! I read all the comments that you leave me and it makes me really happy. Special shout out this week to my buddy Ricci for listening and offering to come onto the show – I haven't forgotten about that, man, I'm coming for you. Happy Pride month, everyone! Stay safe, have fun, and remember that Pride started when two trans women of color threw bricks at cops! Thanks for listening, we'll see you next week!

SOURCES:

Dorothy Arzner: Queen of Hollywood

Why Was One of Hollywood’s First Female Film Directors, Dorothy Arzner, Forgotten?

Dorothy Arzner, First Female Director in Hollywood Studio System

Women Who Paved The Way: Dorothy Arzner

A Life Shared: Marion Morgan and Dorothy Arzner

[not-close-to-straight]

Nottingham (Villain!Tony)

A villain!Tony AU in which he isn’t so much Robin Hood as he is a crime boss in Manhattan that kills anyone who crosses him, where Maid Miriam is Police Captain Steve Rogers caught between his duty to the law and the growing realization that Tony isn’t quite the villain everyone thinks he is, and Little John is Bucky Barnes, second in command to Tony Stark and willing to do whatever it takes to keep the man he loves safe. 

(I actually don’t know if this will go anywhere, but I posted it on KoFi and got barely any feedback so I’m going to post it here instead!) 

**********************

"Feeling risky today, are we?" The man behind the big desk poured a helping of cream into his coffee and stirred it with slow, methodical movements, not bothering to even make eye contact with the police officer in front of him for several minutes.

"Cos I'm coming to you in the daytime?" the officer asked uncertainly, and the man corrected--

"Cos you're coming to me at all." 

"...Oh." Deputy Inspector Justin Hammer was a man not used to being talked down to, not in his personal life nor his professional. Officials at his rank answered to very few people with in the NYPD and it rankled Hammer's pride to be forced to kow tow to a civilian --

--but then again, the man in front of him wasn't anything close to just a civilian.

Anthony Edward "Tony" Stark ran more of New York than the damn mayor, controlling half the trade that came through the docks and supplying the drugs and alcohol that flooded through both upper and lower class alike. He owned dozens and dozens of neighborhoods and another dozens worth of store fronts and night clubs. More money ran across his desk in a week than most people saw in a lifetime, there were enough weapons stashed away in various warehouses to give even the army a reason to worry, and the powers that be had learned long ago to leave the Stark family alone.

He was a dangerous man, a brutal man and Justin Hammer had been in the employ of the Stark family long enough to know Tony had inherited all of his father's cut throat manner, and absolutely none of his mothers compassion. 

The past three years had been some of the bloodiest the city had seen in decades, outright war in the streets between the families, riots and lootings, entire neighborhoods burned just to prove a point and Tony Stark had instigated it all from right here in the fortified compound he called Nottingham.

But this wasn’t Sherwood Forest, and Tony Stark was no Robin Hood. 

The rampant violence contrasted sharply with the attractive features of the not quite thirty year old, his eyes dark and wickedly intelligent, hair styled and suit tailored by the best in the city. Tony's demeanor was deceptively calm, his voice almost frighteningly soft but there wasn't a person in the world that didn't fear for their life when his smile turned sharp.

“I’m busy.” Tony said pointedly, pinning Deputy Inspector Hammer with a look just bordering on impatient. “Say what you need to say and then get out.” 

"Sorry. I uh--I came to tell you--" Justin pushed his glasses up his nose and tried to appear neither nervous nor annoyed at the rude treatment. He valued his own life far too much to irritate the man. "--I came to tell you there’s a new Captain on the force, one Captain Steven Rogers. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, lost his ma to an act of gang violence and has sworn to clean up the streets, sworn to come after you and your family, specifically.”

"You're wasting my time." Tony took a deliberate sip of his coffee. "Why would I care about that? Take care of him like you've taken care of all the others who came sniffing around too much. My god, is there still a non corrupt officer on the force? I'd thought I'd bought them all or killed them all.” 

"Can't buy this one." Hammer informed him, keeping a close eye on the bodyguard just over Tony's shoulder, a hulking brute one with ice blue eyes and the terrifying ability to slit a man's throat in a split second. "He's too good. Spent some time in the army and has a commendation from the fucking president for saving lives. We can't touch him without drawing too much attention, and he's comin' for you, Tony. Watch your back."

"Watch my back." Tony's lips twisted in a sneer. "Interesting choice of words coming from man who's made a fortune betraying his fellow officers and forsaking his oath as an policeman over and over, isn’t it?” 

"I'm doing you a favor, Tony." Justin insisted. "I'm loyal to your family, proving it yet again by telling you about this Captain. You'll have to step lightly while he's around." he took a file from his jacket-- showing it carefully to the bodyguard when his hands twitched towards his gun. "Here's all I got on him."

"Consider your loyalty noted." Tony picked up the file and flipped through it quickly. "By the way, I have a boat coming in to the docks this evening. You will pull your men off patrol tonight or you'll be pulling their bodies from the water in the morning, do you understand?"

"...yes."

"Let yourself out through the back door, the front door is for guests and friends only.” 

For several minutes after the weasely man had left, Tony read through the file on the new Captain, noting the commendations and awards, the service record and lingering for a long moment over the picture on the front.

"Bucky." he said, and the ever present body guard moved forward. "Tell me what you think of him."

"Looks'ta me he's a man in need of some unstarchin'." Bucky drawled in his lazy Brooklyn accent. "Look at th' press of his uniform. Not even your pants are seamed so tight, babydoll. He needs'ta have some fun."

"Hm." Tony tipped his head back when Bucky's big hand wove through his hair, tugging gently but possessively at the strands. "I agree. In need of some unstarching. Invite Captain Steven Rogers over for dinner, but not in your usual way. I'd like his face blemish free for the time being."

"Yeah, alright." Bucky bent and licked a long stripe up Tony's neck, digging his teeth in at the pulse point and groaning when Tony retaliated by palming over the front of his trousers, squeezing at him purposefully. "You gonna let me kill Hammer yet? Fuckin' irritatin' prick."

"Soon enough." Tony assured him. "First get the Captain here. Then we'll talk about killing the Deputy. I think he’s about outlived his usefulness."