Tony never meant to get into this scene, he always thought he’d be an engineer, but things with his father had never gone well and when they finally hit their tipping point, well. Even his mother couldn’t bring him home now and she was probably the only thing he liked about his old life. Given his upbringing one would think he’d have a hell of a time adjusting but Tony- or Adrian Carbonell to people who didn’t know who he really was- had always liked puzzles. The first thing he did was research the cost of living in an area he wanted to settle in, the next step was to figure out a way to make that much and then some to pad his expenses and his lifestyle. The last thing was to downgrade considerably from his previous lifestyle. It hadn’t taken long and thanks to Howard being rich he had plenty of trinkets he could pawn if he needed the cash badly enough.
So he took off, just grabbed a car and went. The car was one of his father’s and, since Tony isn’t an idiot, he had a lot of work done on it to change the appearance quite a bit and gave the guy who did it a little hush money for his troubles. That was another thing he had to pad expenses if needed but he got lucky. In California lots of people had pretty cars and in LA people were way less likely to notice his flash. That had been the point, expensive city or no.
He had expected to struggle, it was hardly like normal people could afford the neighborhood he was looking to live in, but he must have had a horseshoe shoved up his ass or something because he didn’t end up struggling at all. He was walking down the street contemplating his options- which were none at the time and he was living in his car- when he hears a car rev. He was tempted to keep walking but the car revs again and someone swears, “something isn’t right, it shouldn’t be that loud,” a male voice says.
“Check the exhaust manifold,” Tony yells across the street.
“Already did that buddy but thanks,” the guy yells back, waving at Tony almost dismissively.
“It’s not cracked enough to see it at a brief glace yet,” Tony yells back. He knew his cars and he knew his sounds. He knew what was up with the car. The other guy must too because most wouldn’t notice the damage this soon, most noticed after they could feel the car’s performance slow and the manifold was making noises that weren’t normal. This guy’s was barely damaged, but enough to notice if you knew what to listen for.
The guy looks at Tony for a moment and waves at someone to do something. Tony sees a large grumpy looking guy with more muscles than one human needed go to the back of the car. “What’s your name, buddy?” the guy asks and Tony makes a brief glace at the roads before crossing the street.
“Adrian,” he lies easily enough. Starbucks was a weird help in learning to call to the name. They needed names for drinks so Tony went there every day and ordered something until calling to Adrian was second nature to him.
“Adrian,” the guy repeats, looking Tony over. Tony couldn’t decide if he was sizing him up or checking him out but this was the first real conversation he’s had in almost two weeks so he takes it. “What do you know about cars?” he asks.
“Plenty. Been working on them my whole life,” he says. That’s true, he’s always loved them and he loved to tinker with them.
His companion gives him another once over, “you don’t look like you’re the type to get your hands dirty,” he says. It’s not what he says but the tone he says it in that makes the hairs on the back of Tony’s neck stand on end.
“I clean up well,” he tells the other guy. It wasn’t wrong, just unlike most mechanics he got the benefits of manicures to clean his hands and nails to normal people standards.
“He knows his cars because he’s right. There’s a small crack, barely enough to make a difference,” the tall guy with the muscles tells the other guy.
“Lucky guess,” the first guy mumbles.
“If you want to go two for two your starter is wonky too. There was buzzing,” he says. He gets a look but gestures for Muscles to check it out.
“You clean up well,” the guy repeats, returning to their earlier conversation. “Where you from?”
“New York. City and state,” Tony says. Rhodey once told him the best way to tell a lie was to tell the truth and that he had a shitty poker face. New York was massive and he hardly looked very different than the average Italian guy in his late twenties without the distinctive facial hair. He was sad to see it go.
“Should’ve guessed that, I could hear the accent. What drew you here?” he asks.
“Same thing that draws everyone, the nightlife.” It wasn’t a lie exactly, he was well known for his nightlife before this but that was mostly due to his insomnia. This was a city that didn’t sleep and it was a city that probably held at least a thousand Tony Stark look alikes. He’d blend right in and he wouldn’t have trouble finding a job that would give him night shifts.
The guy nods, “is that right? Usually people like the city for the gambling,” he says.
Tony laughs, “if I had the money to spare, maybe. What’s with the twenty questions?” he asks.
He doesn’t get an answer right away because Muscles interrupts, “two for two. The starter is going too.”
That brings a weird kind of smile to his companion’s face. “So you do know your cars, or at least you know your sounds. From across the street. That’s impressive and trust me, impressive isn’t a word I use often. You have a job?”
*
Peter Quill lucked the fuck out. Some rando on the side of the street heard a couple noises from his car and needed a job and presto, Peter managed to find a fucking genius. To say the guy was good was an understatement, he knew everything about everything when it came to… well anything that wasn’t human really. Within days Peter’s car was running better than he’s ever got it to run, all his computers were fixed, his tablet was no longer acting up, and the Wifi was faster.
“Hey Adrian,” Peter says about a week after he found him on the side of the road, “can you drive as good as you do your job?” he asks. He had to ask, he was just too curious.
“Depends on what you mean by ‘drive’,” Adrian says and Peter smiles.
“I like you. I mean race,” he clarifies.
Adrian shrugs, “never tried it,” he admits and that’s how Peter gets him on a quarter stretch so see what this guy could do with a car.
Peter is in the Milano, as always, and he’s gifted Adrian with Drax’s red and black beast of a car for this little experiment. Drax hadn’t been happy but Gamora told him in no uncertain terms that if the new guy so much as looked at her car funny there would be no more new guy. So Drax’s car it was. Gamora watches them lazily, standing between the two cars with a red piece of cloth in the air for a few moments before brining it down. They both set off and Peter is certain he’ll win if for no other reason than experience. Adrian keeps up surprisingly well though, shifting when he was supposed to and, for some reason; he kept looking over at Peter’s car. Not Peter, the car.
He thinks for sure he’s about to lose the kid when he shifts into high gear- metaphorically of course- but no. Not only does Adrian keep up, he passes Peter. He wins by a half an inch but he does it. Gamora thinks it’s amusing but Peter is annoyed, more than annoyed actually, he’s flat out pissed off.
“Bullshit you’ve never raced before,” he tells Adrian when he crawls out of Drax’s car.
Adrian doesn’t look bothered but he always seemed to keep his cool. “That’d be a stupid thing to lie about,” he points out. “I’ve never raced before, at least not with another person. I drive fast all the time.”
“Do you have any idea how good I am?” Peter asks angrily. Adrian gives him a look, one that says ‘obviously not, idiot’. “I’m the best damn driver on the east coast and you beat me on the first try! That’s not beginners luck!”
“No,” Adrian agrees, “it isn’t. It’s engineer’s luck. I know your car, I’ve worked on it and I’ve seen what’s under Drax’s hood too. I’ve heard it run. All I needed to do was to see how you shifted, when to shift, and I was fine. Know the car and you know the limits. Plus I have the added benefit of knowing the driver too. Your last shift was about three seconds too soon but most people can’t do math as fast as I can to know that if I held out for another few seconds by speed would surpass yours at the last few seconds of that mile.”
Math. Peter called bullshit but Adrian laid it all out for him, the whole formula, how he calculated it, all the variables that went into it, and lastly they both knew the conclusion. Adrian won. “Jesus Christ that guy is good,” Rocket says, letting out a snicker. “We’ve got to keep him!”
*
Rocket, Tony learns, is the other resident genius around here. He’s good, even genius good, but he’s nowhere near Tony’s level of good. Not with cars anyways. He had his own things on the side that were impressive and stuff that Tony would buy if he still had a company to buy for. He’d been curious enough to ask Rocket where he went to school and he laughs, “I didn’t. My parents were hicks; I went to a shitty public school, dropped out in grade nine and beat feet here. I met Peter and got into racing,” he says. He’s mapping out an engine with more skill and accuracy than Justin Hammer could and he graduated from MIT.
Tony shakes his head, “that’s fucking crazy, you’re probably a literal genius you know.” It isn’t a word he uses lightly, not when he’s an actual genius.
Rocket shrugs, “maybe but school was never my thing, all the subjects bored me to death except math but my teachers didn’t appreciate my designs. I would have flunked out anyways if I didn’t just skip town. The ADD doesn’t help at all.”
“It’s funny, I have it too but my teachers liked to give me free passes in subjects I hated because I was so smart. I ended up getting a degree from MIT,” Tony tells him.
Rocket laughs, “no shit? My teachers hated me because I’d fidget and talk and a bunch of other things teachers don’t like. How’d you do it? How’d you focus?”
“Like I said, my teachers gave me free passes in classes I hated. I’d probably never pass an English class if my teachers didn’t give me a bunch of leeway. Beyond that I took classes I was interested in, stuff like science and math. I never lost focus in those classes because I liked them too much to want to miss the information. Lots of people thought I was faking the ADD for pills or something because of my ability to focus but they didn’t know it was only because I liked the classes. Throw me into a situation I have no interest in and I’m a menace,” he says, laughing. Business meetings, galas, birthday parties, the country club, you name it, if he didn’t want to be there or had no interest in what was going on he did and said whatever he wanted and it usually didn’t end well.
“Huh. Weird that teachers were so nice to you,” Rocket says.
No, it wasn’t. Teachers liked him because his father had money and he was paying some impressive fees for Tony to be at that boarding school. That, and he noticed a clear difference in the way teachers treated Rhodey versus him when they were in MIT and Rocket was clearly Latino even if he also obviously has vitiligo, Tony didn’t doubt that his race was a good indicator of why his teachers may have disliked him. That and he was a raging asshole. Tony liked him anyways because he understood Rocket in a way that no one else seemed to beyond his tall Nigerian friend that Tony only recently found out was mute. He spoke sign language but not any Tony recognized and only Rocket had any kind of understanding to Groot’s gestures.
“I lived in a good area,” Tony says and Rocket snorts.
“Oh well that explains it. The wealthy white kid with ADD always gets treated better than the rest of us. No offense,” Rocket says bitterly.
“None taken. My best friend is black; I saw the way people treated him differently and he didn’t have ADD so I get it, sort of. It can’t be fun to see someone else who’s just like you get treated better because they were born into different circumstances,” he says.
“No. It isn’t. But I built my own life here and I like it even if I give Quill a hard time. My family was a bunch of assholes so this is all I’ve got now and they’re good to me, even when I’m a douche.” And boy was Rocket ever a douche sometimes, but Tony could practically smell the trust issues on him. He knew a thing or two about that as well.
“It’s hard to trust people when you’re worried they’ll stab you in the back,” Tony says and Rocket looks at him in surprise.
“Yeah, I know that and apparently you know that but everyone else…” he trails off so Tony picks up where he left off.
“Everyone else thinks that because you’ve never done anything to you that you have no reason to lack trust or faith in them. But when all you’ve known your whole life is people treating you like shit and people start treating you well you wonder when the other shoe is going to drop because it always drops. People being good to you never comes without a cost and it’s hard to forget that once you’ve learned it,” he says and Rocket nods, flopping back in his chair.
“Shit man, I’ve never met anyone who understood that before. You should tell Quill that, he doesn’t understand why I’m such an asshole to him but I can’t help it. I try but…” he shakes his head.
“But you have to push him away before he gets too close, before he has enough emotional ammunition to fuck you over,” Tony says and Rocket nods.
“Yeah, that. We need therapy,” he says and Tony starts laughing.
“Fuck therapy, I’d rather be fucked up forever than let some asshole into my head,” he says and Rocket starts laughing too. He agrees and gives Tony a high five and they return to the engines like they didn’t just have a discussion about their deep seeded psychological issues.
*
Peter watches Adrian work, looking over his body with a mix of envy and lust. Sure the guy might be a little on the short side but he packed a lot of muscle on too. “Rocket likes you,” he says and Adrian jumps, just about hitting his head on the car hood.
“So? Rocket likes all of you, he just doesn’t know how to show it right,” Adrian says. Peter had some serious doubts about that.
“Rocket likes you best, then,” he corrects.
Adrian shakes his head, “nah, I just understand Rocket the best so he tends to treat me better because when he doesn’t I know why. But he likes all of you, and he looks up to you specifically,” Adrian tells him.
“No clue why,” Peter mumbles and Adrian snorts.
“Gee, I don’t know, maybe because you’re a damn good driver, you’re a strong leader, you treat your chosen family better than most people treat their blood relatives, and it probably helps that you’re hot,” he says casually. Peter had been wondering about this guy’s sexuality but saying ‘hey, are you into guys?’ is weird and a little invasive so Peter kept his questions to himself. Adrian had never displayed a preference before now though, any discussions about attraction were usually met with indifferent grunts.
“Thanks. Probably only half of that is true, but I appreciate it,” he says.
“It’s all true, I don’t bullshit to flatter it’s not my style,” Adrian says. Peter knows that’s true because he’s heard Adrian tell plenty of people at races exactly what he thought of them, their cars, and on one memorable occasion this guy’s dog.
“Is that why you stuck around? Rocket told me you have a degree from MIT so I don’t see what you’re doing here with some criminal street racers. Shouldn’t you be off doing something good for the world like… I don’t know, working for Tony Stark or something,” he says, picking the first name he could think of that was attached to technology. Granted Stark has been missing for almost three months but still, his point still stands.
Adrian lets out a full body laugh at that and it’s attractive on him. Peter didn’t see him laugh like that often. “No, I think I’m exactly where I want to be for probably the first time in my life. I only went to MIT because that’s what my parents wanted me to do. This whole thing, me being here? That was because I decided I was done living to try and please them, that I was never going to be happy if I kept trying to do that,” he says. “Now I’m probably the family disappointment but I was a disappointment before too so I guess I’ve just leveled up.”
Peter smiles, “oh man, I was the family disappointment too. My mom died when I wan young but this guy, Yondu, took me in and he really shouldn’t have had kids. I mean he loved me no doubt but he obviously had no idea how to be a parent because he sucked at it. And I sucked at being a kid too so we were even.”
“Same here. My parents had all these expectations and stuff for me to meet and I mostly just wanted to fuck off and do my own thing. I did it a few times too but this time I made it permanent and it was probably the best decision I’ve ever made,” Adrian says, smiling wistfully.
Peter was happy he made the decision too because he was rather fond of Adrian.
*
There was, Tony learns, nothing quite like the adrenaline from a race. He’s always driven fast but never this fast and never against anyone else. Peter had taught him how to drive properly, said he already had most of the skill anyways, but that he needed to make sure he was doing everything right for the car’s sake. Tony could have done fine without the lesson, he knew how to push the machines just right based on his engineering knowledge alone, but the lessons helped considerably. In turn he taught Peter how to do car math, which he was already good at without knowing it. Tony just gave him the tools to work through the math and car knowledge with precision.
When they were on the road though there was nothing else like it. Tony listened to the sounds of his car, or the cars around him, and did math at rates so fast it was a wonder he got to the end of his calculations before he was passing people. It was incredible. He never would have thought this was something he needed in his life until he met Peter.
“Amazing isn’t it?” Peter asks one night when Tony wins yet another race.
“Like nothing else,” Tony agrees.
“Before this I used to do stupid shit for fun. I mean this is also unquestionably stupid and also illegal but it’s more controlled than before. And when you’re on the road,” Peter shakes his head and laughs, “you have this weird freedom, like you’re flying but you’re still on the ground. Everything is going by you so fast and for once you don’t need to pay attention to it all, you just need to be in front of everyone else. And then its like cloud nine.” His face shows the bliss he feels and Tony knows what he means.
“It’s just you and the car, flying down the road like there’s nothing else in the world except your hands on the wheel,” Tony says. It wasn’t quite like inventing something new, something the world has never seen before, but it was close. He still got to work on the cars and that was fun, plus the adrenaline was genuinely unlike anything else he’s ever done. It was amazing even if it fell just short of his love for inventions. It wasn’t a bad way to settle, that’s for sure.
Peter smiles, “yeah, exactly. And all this,” he gestures around, “it’s all just a bunch of bullshit.”
“A means to an end,” Tony agrees. “It’s all just a bunch of shit you deal with until you’re in that car again, feeling the freedom of the road.”
“Yeah, exactly.”
*
Peter takes Adrian somewhere no one has ever been before; somewhere he doesn’t go much himself. He takes in the sight of the house and looks back at Peter, “is there something special here that I’m not seeing?” he asks.
He nods, “this was my father’s house. The one he lived in when he and my mom met. He’s a piece of shit and I hope he gets hit by a transport but my mom used to talk about this place all the time. It’s where she fell in love with him and with cars. I was eight when she died but I always loved working with her in the garage,” he says. He doesn’t look at Adrian, not when he knows he has tears in his eyes. He missed his mom more than anything in the world and he’d do anything to get her back but she’s gone.
“It’s a nice place,” Adrian says softly and Peter smiles just a little.
“I know. My dad was pretty well off. Once I won enough money in races I bought the place, thought it’d make me feel closer to my mom,” he admits.
“Did it work?” Adrian asks softly.
He shakes his head, “no. Only two things that do that are racing and working on the Milano. It used to be hers; it’s why I don’t usually take her to races. She’s too precious to me to get fucked up by some asshole trying to drive me off the road,” he says.
“I wondered about that. You only seem to drive the car when it’s safe from being screwed up somehow. Guess that explains it,” he says.
“What about you?” Peter asks. “You’ve got all this information to give us but it never really means anything. So you’re from New York state and city, you grew up wealthy, you have ADD, you went to MIT, and your best friend is black. But none of that really says much about you; it’s all just snippets of a past you obviously aren’t fond of.” When it came to personal details, like the really personal ones, Adrian was good at changing the subject. Peter had noticed it long ago and no matter how hard he tried Adrian was good at deflecting.
For a long few moments Adrian just stares back at him and then he sighs. “I do a lot of talking without really saying anything at all because I’m not who you think I am. Adrian Carbonell isn’t my real name; it’s one I made up when I ran off. Everything I told you was true, but knowing I’m Tony Stark probably makes a lot of that make much more sense.”
Peter opens his mouth to deny it but he closes it when he realizes that Adrian- Tony’s- face looked familiar. Too familiar. “I… your parents are offering one hell of a reward for your return,” he says finally.
Adri- Tony- snorts. “I know they are and I’m trusting you to keep my presence here to yourself. I ran off for a reason,” he says somewhat cryptically.
“Which was…?” Peter asks, curious as to why a rich kid like Tony would take off from his padded and pampered life to live in LA and work with a bunch of criminals to street race.
“Pressure mostly. It got to be too much. That and you’re not the only one with a piece of shit father. He likes to drink too much and turn my mom and I into punching bags. She claims he loves us, I think that’s just what she tells herself because accepting the alternative is too painful. I get it, I wouldn’t want to be married to a piece of shit that thinks I’m less than human either but I couldn’t keep living that lie. So I left.” He looks so hurt and he looks a little lost too, both things that Peter was familiar with.
“Well,” he says, “you’ve got a place here with me and the rest of us if you still want it. I don’t think anyone would blame you for lying when there’s literally a million dollar reward hanging over your head.” He wouldn’t have said anything either.
Adri- Tony- nods. “I’m not going anywhere, if you guys still want me around.”
Peter nods, “oh they’ll still want you but probably on one condition…”
One Year Later:
Tony throws himself into the spot beside Peter and grins when Peter wraps his arm around him. Things were easier now, harder also, but mostly easier. “How’d it go?” Peter asks and Tony’s grin grows.
“Well actually. Turns out mom got sick of Howard’s shit too so when I asked for my inheritance and he tried to screw me over mom about threw him out on his ass. Turns out he was pretty reckless in his youth and he didn’t have her sign a prenup so she’s entitled to half anyways. She threatened to leave him and walk away with it all so I’d have my inheritance anyways so he let me have it,” he says. And then his mom made him promise that he would call and talk to her every once and awhile. That and that he’d never disappear for over a year ever again. Then she presumably called Rhodey to chew him out because Tony may have let it slip that he knew Tony was alive the whole time because they kept in contact.
Peter laughs, “nice. I wish I could have seen that, it was probably a sight to see if you’re stories about your mom hold up.”
“They do. She’s a tough woman,” Tony says, a note of pride in his voice. He might hate his father but his mom was precious to him.
“Must he where you get it from. So where are you going from here?” Peter asks. The deal was that Tony had to do something with his life, which everyone else agreed with. Maybe he loved racing, maybe he was even built for it, but it wasn’t his passion like it was Peter’s. Tony loved the rush, loved the feel if the car speeding down the road but appreciation wasn’t passion and they could all see that except him apparently. So they all made Tony promise that he’d go to his father and get his inheritance and do something with himself.
Tony agreed because Peter was right even if he hadn’t known it until he said it. It wasn’t that he lacked the passion for racing, not exactly, but that just wasn’t who he was. Not like the others. He’s an inventor, always has been, and toying with the cars and new ways to make them go faster was a good hold over but it wouldn’t have kept him occupied forever. Eventually it would have lost its luster.
“I’m going to do what I was meant to. Invent things. I have plans to start a new company and the first person I’m hiring is Rocket because someone needs to buy his cool shit and I want to be that guy. No one else knows he’s around and I have a sneaking suspicion I can find more like him if I play my cards right,” he says.
Peter smiles, “a new company huh? Think you can make cool car parts for me?” he asks.
“I’d make you cool car parts even without a company,” he tells Peter and he laughs.
“Just checking,” he says, laughing when Tony rolls his eyes fondly at him. “So when do these plans of yours start?” he asks.
Tony thinks about it for a moment before he shrugs, “they’ve kind of already started. I’ve had plans for months and I had extra money thanks to racing so I uh… bought a place and now I have the money to renovate and actually get things off the ground. Also I already kind of hired a friend of mine from school to help run things. You’ll love Pepper, she’s like Gamora but white and a redhead,” he says.
Peter shakes his head, “no one is like Gamora. We should introduce them though, they might make a cute couple and Gamora has been whining about being single,” Peter says.
Gamora didn’t whine about anything, it was Peter that was whining about her being single. Apparently coupledom has made him want to play matchmaker with everyone except Rocket, who maintained that romance was for dipshits and ninnies and he was fine with Groot. Peter left it be because… well Rocket is Rocket. And he was genuinely fine with Groot anyways, Tony didn’t think romance suited Rocket anymore than Rocket did.
Peter’s matchmaking skills elsewhere though, that was amusing even if he was sure Gamora and Drax didn’t think so. “Pepper is a lesbian. We had a short lived relationship that clued her in,” he says. She probably actually would get along with Gamora at least as friends, maybe he should introduce them.
“You turned a girl gay? Way to go, Stark,” Peter says, artfully dodging Tony’s smack to the arm.
“She was gay when we got together, she just realized it with me. No hard feelings, we kept in touch. She was happy to help me out though, probably because she had some kind of faith I won’t fuck this up,” he says. “Lets hope I don’t prove her wrong.”
“You won’t,” Peter says with confidence in his voice. “If there’s anything I’ve learned from you in the last year it’s that you’re freakishly good at everything except Shakespeare.” Tony smiles and shakes his head, annoyed that he was never going to live that time he confused Hamlet with Macbeth mixed with Romeo and Juliet. Even Rocket knew he was wrong and he’s never read the plays. Proof, he decided, that English as a subject was not for him.