science bros vs the government
People had a lot to say about Tony Stark. They seemed to think they knew him better than he knew himself, just because they saw his face on a few news channels. To some people, he was an arrogant bastard who lived off his daddy’s money. To others - he was a problem, a hopeless case. He couldn’t walk through a hallway without there being speculations about his life. It was a goddamn tragedy, how many people were invested in this kid's life.
Funnily enough, none of these people knew him personally. None of them had even held a conversation with him. Many tried, but Tony never really responded. Lots of people consider that a conversation, when they talk to someone. But that’s all bullshit. It’s only a conversation if the other person answers, and Tony never answers, therefore none of them have had a conversation with him.
If you did know Tony personally, you’d have different things to say about him. It’s too bad no one did know him personally, so there was no way of knowing what they’d say. The closest thing he had to a friend was Bruce, because he was the only one who could put up with Tony’s bullshit. Actually, he couldn’t really, but he stuck around so that probably meant something. That was pretty sad, in retrospect. Tony’s life was pretty sad. Only, he didn’t think so. Honestly, he liked it that way. He liked that there was no one who’d insist he go out with them, or anyone who’d be a potential distraction. Tony didn’t like distractions. They were annoying.
He did sometimes wish people would stop making speculations about him, although his attitude towards everyone said otherwise. People thought he screamed ‘pay attention to me’. Really, he just couldn’t care less. He couldn’t care less what people thought when he snapped at everyone around him, or when he walked into class 30 minutes late clearly drunk out of his mind. He dressed the way he wanted to, acted the way he wanted to, and did what he wanted to. That kind of became an issue. And from that little issue of his came all the insane rumors about him.
There were rumors he’d been in a mental hospital over the summer. Not really, he was just in rehab.
Some said he wasn’t really Howard Stark’s child. God, he wished he wasn’t.
Rumors about him being an alien from Mars weren’t common, but there were definitely a few who truly believed it. He wasn’t an alien, he was just smart. Have these people really never seen a genius before? They existed.
There were even speculations about him being Captain America, which were probably the most ridiculous ones yet. Tony was the absolute opposite of patriotism. Patriotism was bullshit, and Tony hated it all.
Besides, he was just 17, he didn’t have time to be Captain America.
Being Iron Man was taxing enough.
Anyway, the point is, Tony didn’t care much for friends. Which is why he and Bruce found themselves in the bathroom, hacking into a top secret government agency to look for a blue glowy box. You know, normal things you do when you have no social life.
“Seriously man, what the hell prompted this idea.”
“I wanna find the Tesseract. So, we’re gonna find the Tesseract.”
“What the hell is a Tesseract?”
“Well, it’s blue, and it glows, and can also probably destroy the world. I don’t know the specifics.” Tony replied off-handedly, tapping at his phone rapidly. That didn’t seem to reassure Bruce.
“C’mon Tony, please, we could go do… literally anything else.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure Brucie? We got this.”
“Oh, I have no doubts you can hack into this shit. I’m just worried about what we’re gonna find. I mean, what if it’s like, a nuclear bomb. I dunno why they’d make a nuclear bomb blue, but it’s the government, they do weird shit, Tony! We don’t wanna get caught up in the weird shit.”
“Speak for yourself, I’d love to be in the weird shit. Besides, I’m Iron Man, nothing bad’s gonna happen.”
“Wait, you’re what?”
Clint and Nat would love to say they were normal high schoolers. Well, Clint would. Nat actually kind of liked the whole idea of being a spy. It was a lot better than being an assassin, for one thing, and she sort of liked the thrill. It was a bitch to have to adjust her personality all the time, and never form real friendships with anyone but Clint, but hey, you win some, you lose some.
This target however, was the worst possible person she could’ve been assigned to spy on. The only signs of him on the internet were outrageous conspiracy theories and his shitposting on Twitter, she couldn’t track his spendings because he bought companies out of spite, and he was so hard to follow around because of just how tiny he was. Seriously, the guy was short as fuck.
Why would S.H.I.E.L.D. even need to have Tony Stark spied on. What exactly was he hiding? Based on what she knew about the guy, he was just some kid who accidentally inherited a company, and decided to make an 18 year old his CEO. Pepper Potts. Nothing outrageous Natasha could find about her either. She was hot though, so Nat would give her that. Stark was rude, arrogant, and maybe just a bit of a genius. So what did S.H.I.E.L.D. want from him exactly? That’s something she would love to find out.
Clint thought it was related to the Tesseract. After all, the Tesseract is something that had just recently gone missing, and also had something to do with Howard Stark and Captain America. Natasha thought back to the conspiracy theory that Tony Stark was Captain America. She almost laughed at the thought. Stark was everything except patriotic and responsible. Could be an act, but Nat wouldn’t count on that. Besides, Howard spent all that time looking for Captain America, there’s no way his son would be the one in question. Also, the guy was blonde. So, not much in common with Stark. And anyway, Clint comes up with conspiracies about anything and everything, and most of them aren’t even reasonable.
Maybe Stark knew something? That may be what it was. He hacked into a Senator group chat once on a dare (while drunk), so it wasn’t unlikely that he knew about S.H.I.E.L.D. and maybe even their classified information. But if he knew something, wouldn’t they try to recruit him? He’d be a valuable asset to S.H.I.E.L.D. anyway. The dude was a genius. An annoying one, sure, but definitely a genius.
Whatever it was, she’d find out eventually. Natasha Romanoff has never failed a mission. She wouldn’t fail this one.
“... and he didn’t even answer me! The guy just looked up, stared me dead in the eye for a few seconds, and went back to sleep! He’s so… ”
Clint had a different approach than Nat at their job. He was always the more social of the two of them, trying to lure the target into a false sense of comfort and security and slowly getting information based on their relaxed body language and clues they threw out. It was a pretty good tactic, but Nat just wasn’t as good at it as him. So anyway, Clint had tried to approach Stark and strike up conversation, which obviously didn’t work out.
“... but seriously, Nat, this job is getting harder than expected. What the hell is Stark hiding? Are you even listening to me?”
“Yeah Clint, I’ve been listening to you bitch about Stark for the past 15 minutes. Calm your tits.”
“Fucking hell Nat, we can’t fail this mission.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“So what’s our next move?”
Huh. Natasha didn’t actually have an answer to that. Clint sighed at her lack of response.
“Look, I really think looking into the Tesseract is the right course of action. Stark’s definitely involved, his father was, and now S.H.I.E.L.D. have us watching him? After it goes missing? It’s connected, I’m telling you.”
You know what? Maybe it was worth considering.
“Alright, let’s go find that fucking Tesseract.”
Getting used to a whole new society is pretty hard. It’s even harder when your 13 year old sibling won’t stop whining about how the Tesseract went missing.
“No, Brother, you don’t understand my plight. I had a very well developed plan to acquire the Tesseract from the grasp of the government, but they lost it! Those incompetent fools lost it! Can you believe it?”
“I will be very honest with you, Loki. I do not know what a Tesseract is.”
“You fool.”
That was another thing that made this transition very hard. Thor was not at all aware of what Loki was looking for, or why they needed it. But he was stuck in this world, so he may as well make the most of it.
“Loki, would you like to visit a ‘mall’. It seems very interesting.”
“No.”
“Alright, then.”
A big part of blending in with humans was going to school. Thor found it to be very intriguing. He was very interested in learning Midgardian customs, and people seemed to like him, so everything was going wonderfully. Loki didn’t enjoy it as much. They were at a different school than Thor, and it was apparently “their own personal hell”. Middle school, they called it. It really couldn’t be all that bad. Loki just… wasn’t the most social.
There was also the matter of Jane. Thor was lucky to have Jane, she guided him through this new realm and helped him adapt. He was most grateful to her for it. So really, Jane wasn’t a problem. She just seemed to like Thor a little bit too much. And while Thor was very grateful and honored, he couldn’t return the lady’s feelings. He just hoped she wouldn’t feel too bad about it. Apart from that, she was very nice and helpful.
“Lady Jane, what is this exactly?”
“That’s a water fountain. You, like, drink from it.”
“How curious!”
“You know, you have really nice abs.”
“Ah, thank you for the compliment! Say, do you also think that guy over there is quite good looking? Because I certainly do!”
She took the hint after that. Only now, she made it her mission to get Thor a boyfriend. Thor only hoped she’d find him a good match.
This “Tesseract” still plagued Thor’s mind. He could only wonder what was so important about it.
Steve fucked up. He fucked up so bad. For starters, he broke his presumed dead boyfriend out of some sort of brainwashing situation. But more importantly, he stole some super important, space travel bullshit from the government, and lost it. He fucking lost it.
What was more embarrassing was that he didn’t even lose it in some badass way. He didn’t get attacked by HYDRA agents or have to fight his ground and barely make it out alive. He just left it on the sidewalk somewhere, and when he went back to get it, it was gone. It could’ve fallen into the wrong person’s hands, and it was all because Steve accidentally left it somewhere. Goddamn it, he fucked up.
“Stevie chill the fuck out. It’s probably out somewhere, with some random person, not being used for evil plans of any sort.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“Hey Pep! Guess what I did today.”
Tony greeted Pepper with a very clearly fake smile. He looked exhausted, Pepper could tell. And anyway, Tony had done a lot of things today, so Pepper was gonna have to do a shit ton of PR managing. She hated that part of her job. If Tony wasn’t so goddamn immature about everything, her job would be so much easier. It’d still be hard, seeing as she’s the CEO of a company with worldwide influence. But it’d definitely be easier.
“You talking about when you sent public death threats to Netflix because they took your favorite show off? Or when you bought an entire waterpark in Brazil this morning?”
“Nah, none of those. Those were fun though. So, I may have told Brucie about my… fun little secret… He took it great though, took the news like a champ!”
“Tony, you’re seriously gonna have to clarify what your fun little secret is. You have so many ‘fun little secrets’, it’s insane.”
“Oh you know, the one where I run around in titanium alloy and kill bad guys.”
“You… Why the fuck would you tell someone?”
Tony just shrugged and pulled someone through the door. ‘Brucie’, Pepper presumed.
“Pep, this is Bruce. Bruce, Pep. You guys should start a club together. Some kind of like, support group”
Bruce just looked shocked. Poor guy. That’s what he got for interacting with Tony, Pepper supposed. Being Tony’s friend is a full time job in itself. The type of full time job that you’d quit after the very first day, and if you happen to stay more than a day, you’re stuck for life. Truly horrifying. Also very fun.
“Oh yeah, I also hacked into some super top secret government agency and figured out what the Tesseract is.”
Tony’s shiteating grin was enough to enrage Pepper.
“You what?
“You heard me, Pep! I did it all on my own.”
“I helped a little.” Bruce finally spoke up, albeit a little timidly. Feeling Pepper’s glare shift to him, he quickly tried to find an excuse.
“It was peer pressure, Ms Potts, I swear.”
Deep breaths, Pepper. Deep breaths.
“Tony, we talked about this. You can’t just hack into top secret government shit.”
“Yeah? Sue me.”
“The government definitely will!”
“Not if they never find out.”
Bruce stood off to the side, watching quietly as the two argued. It was kinda entertaining, honestly. Bruce finally understood all the hype behind Pepper Potts, the woman was badass.
The two stood in silence for a moment, and Pepper sighed.
“Alright fine, what’d you find?”
“Hell yeah, new team member.”
“Not a team member, more like your chaperone.”
“Whatever you say Pep.”
Yeah, maybe Bruce could have some fun with this. He could only hope Tony didn’t piss him off too much throughout the ‘mission’. (Well, Tony called it a mission. It makes it sound more cool and official that way, apparently. Bruce would describe it as an idiotic attempt at self entertainment, but to each their own.)