“Fury,” Tony exclaimed, “I’d say how nice it was to see you again - but one of my New Year's resolutions was to lie less, and I take that very seriously.'' He smirked at the SHIELD director as he walked through the garish steel door of the interrogation room Tony had been occupying.
Fury only rolled his eyes, “Trust me, Stark, I’d prefer it if you weren’t here either, bu-”
“Then what am I doing here, Nick?,” Tony interrupted, “Why did SHIELD agents pull me out of an extraordinarily important board meeting with foreign investors, drag me down to Shield-fucking-Headquarters, and decide to waste my time today?!” Tony grit out the last few words, frustration leaking into his previously nonchalant tone.
Instead of answering, Fury sat across from Tony at the small table he was sitting at, pulling a file seemingly out of thin air and pushing it towards the frustrated brunet before meeting his eyes,
“Tell me, Mister Stark; how familiar are you with your father’s work on The Fingerprint Society?”
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In the late ’80s, one of Howard’s final ideas had risen alongside the advancements in technology. After assisting SHIELD and other government agencies in adapting the newest digitized fingerprint analyzers, he realized a small anomaly in the system. However rare ( a 1 in 2,100,003 chance, to be exact), a fingerprint from one person was a 100% match with someone entirely different.
Howard exhausted all available resources attempting to locate the cause of the glitch - a mixup of files, a bug in the programming - even went as far to assume twins separated from birth (but all researched proved even twins, while so similar, still had different fingerprints). However, when looking further into the problem, he found something interesting - some of the people who matched, typically were already connected with one another: married, dating, etcetera, while others were states apart, never having met.
So he arranged a trail, of sorts. He asked those individuals to come to Stark Industries under the guise of parties, business meetings, anything to get two people with identical fingerprints in the same room, which led to astonishing results: whether in a room packed full of people, or in a neutral, small gathering, both parties would gravitate towards one another - ending up in each other's arms before the end of the night, completely enrapt with one another.
Thus began the Fingerprint Society - a small group of researchers dedicated to the idea that a 100% fingerprint match indicated a near-soulmate compatibility. However, such a theory was entirely too hard to prove, so the research never went much further - nothing more than a concept.
That didn’t stop the Society from monetizing on the idea anyway. After Howard's death, the remaining Society members created a public-access dating site of sorts, allowing people to submit their own fingerprints to the Society's data pool, and in turn, having the potential to find their Soulmate.
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It was Tony’s turn to roll his eyes, pushing the folder away from him without so much as a glance. “Anyone with half a brain and an internet connection can tell you about the Fingerprint Society, Fury - I don’t know why I had to come all the way out here to tell you about a program you know, likely better than me.”
Fury frowned then,”So you don’t think there’s any merit to the initial findings”
“I’m not saying he didn’t do good research,” scoffed Stark, “Dad was nothing if not thorough. - I’m simply saying it’s a hard pill to swallow. Of all the billions of people in this world, maybe 6,000 people have someone specially made for them and the rest of us are just, what? Winging it?!”
“You say the rest of us like you’re not one of them, Tony” Fury’s lip twitched, hiding a smile as Tony’s expression went from indignant to flustered, finally settling on confused.
“Wait, what?”
Fury slid the folder, once again, across the table, before standing up. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet, Mister Stark.”
Tony opened and glossed over the file, shuffling through the pages before standing up and dumbly nodding at the Director, following him down the corridor.
“Initially,” Fury started, startling the shorter man out of his thoughts, “we weren’t going to involve you in this situation, Mr. Stark.” He paused, looking down at Tony, whose brows were furrowed, offended, “but he’s having a rough time adjusting to all the changes, and we thought - if the theory is real - you may be able to help keep him calm”.
“Are you sure there’s not a mixup, I don’t see how I could possibly --”
“We’ve run both prints on the most up to date technology, multiple times, they all match, Tony”
Tony sighed, realizing they’d stopped in front of a steel door, similar to the one in the interrogation rude, the biggest difference was a fist sized dent pushing out from the door. Eyes widening at the amount of force needed to make that dent, he glanced worriedly at the Director.
Fury gave, what Tony is sure was supposed to be a reassuring smile, a grimace as he opened the door with a flourish, “Mister Steve Rogers,” pulling the attention of the sole occupant of the room whose head whipped toward the sound, “I would like to introduce you to Tony Stark.”
Tony’s eyes lock with the blond’s across the room, and unable to look away, a breathless “Hello, handsome,” escaped his lips at the same time as the man, his soulmate, smiled at Tony in what had probably been his first smile this century, and murmured a similar breathy sounding, “Wow.”
Tony pushed himself further into the room, some unknown force pulling him closer toward the soldier out of time, who seemed to be under the same spell. Forgotten were the business meetings and the stress of waking up in an entirely different century, at least for now. Forgotten was Fury, quietly closing the door to Rogers’ room, leaving them to acquaint themselves.