A new story for all of you that liked my last story 'The Not-So-Invincible Tony Stark'

This story is going to be a little bit more light-hearted, and much more Avengers funny moments, but I assure you there will definitely be 'dark' parts, and it is mostly Tony-centric, with a little of Bruce, Steve, and Thor, along with multiple expected appearances of everyone else.

First chapter is kind of long, as I started writing this a long time ago and it doesn't really kick off with plot until a little ways in.

I hope you like it so far, review with suggestions and likes and stuff, and if you haven't already, check out my other Tony-centric story on my page!

One last important thing! If you spot the song reference I've hidden in the chapter, tell me in a review and if you're first then you can do one of three things: 1. Name a character you would like me to write a fanfic about. 2. Tell me what should happen in the next chapter (within reason) 3. choose your own thing! Search on!


Stark Towers was alive with activity as all the Avengers were gathered for their first yearly reunion party. Tony had had the idea for one, and soon a date was set. It was the same day that they had closed the portal Loki had opened, only one year had passed since. Tony, liquor glass in hand, walked around the room, greeting his friends in turn.

"Hey Natasha, long time no see. Sure you weren't just spinning a web in the attic?" Tony quickly dodged the punch that was aimed at his head. He lost his balance and nearly toppled onto Bruce who was standing behind him. "Hey Banner, ready for some science?"

"Not today Tony. Do you have a place where I could maybe sit in quiet? It's a bit loud in here." Tony noticed his fellow scientists hands were twitching nervously.

"Sure bud, go through that door over there." Tony pointed in the general direction of a door across the room. Bruce thanked him and, back hunched, turned and walked away.

Thor sauntered up then, holding a pint of beer and grinning like a madman.

"Greetings my brother." He swung his free hand around and pounded Tony on the back, causing him to cough and splutter.

"Hey meatswing, your swing is still…meaty?" Tony attempted at humor as his back throbbed from Thor's hit. Luckily, Thor had moved on to talk to Natasha and saved Tony another attempt at a snarky comment.

"Mr. Stark. Nice to see you again." Steve walked up, saluting Tony. Always formal.

"Nice to see you too Stripes." Tony recovered from his temporary humor lapse caused by Thor's hand. He gave the captain a mock salute in return. He was about to let loose another humorous comment when Clint seemed to drop from above, landing right in between Steve and Tony.

"Sorry, am I interrupting anything?" His snide remark left Tony unscathed, but Steve looked horrified at the reference to his sexual affiliation. "No harm meant! It's good to see you guys again." Clint held up his hands to calm Steve down.

"How did you just drop from the ceiling? There isn't even anywhere to hide up there." Tony was staring at the ceiling that Clint had 'fallen from'. It was smooth and not a rafter was to be seen. "How is that-"

"Skills man. You just gotta do it." Clint gave Tony a tap on the arm, then saluted Steve and headed over to Natasha who was talking to Thor.

Once Tony decided he had greeted everyone satisfactorily, he headed over to Pepper and hung by her and the bar for the rest of the night. Eventually everyone decided it was time to call it a night and retire to their individual suites.

Tony waved the last person out, and as the elevator doors finally closed, he turned and tugged Pepper in by her waist. He gave her a quick peck on the cheek and they started walking towards his room, and the big, soft, mattress.

Tony awoke to the thick smell of smoke. He immediately shot up and began searching for the source, the fire alarm came on just as he made it to the door. He hadn't even made it to the kitchen before he was soaked through with icy water from the sprinklers. He held up his hand to shield his eyes from the onslaught of water, just in time to run into a certain blonde haired god.

"Ouch, Thor, it's too early to be setting fires." Tony rubbed his shoulder where the god had hit him.

"I am sorry to wake you Stark, but I believe you should, um, go back to bed!" Thor stumbled over his words and looked a little nervous, so Tony disregarded his request and kept asking questions.

"Wait, you didn't actually start the fire, did you?" Tony began to look around the rest of the room for the source of the smoke, but was grabbed roughly on the shoulders and spun back to his room.

"I am sorry man of iron, I did not mean to wake you. Although I really believe it would be in your best interest to remain in your room until the matter is cleared up."

"Thor, what are you doing?Why are you pushing Tony around?" Natasha walked up, holding her hand up to shield her eyes from the spray of the sprinklers, and Thor dropped his hands from the shoulders of the enraged scientist.

"Um… well, I, I accidentally set the kitchen area on fire. I was trying to make everybody a good breakfast like that of my home." Thor looked so humiliated that Natasha smirked and Tony rolled his eyes. All this commotion for a measly grease fire, and the sprinklers probably ruined half his furniture.

"Hey, I heard the alarm, what's happened?" Steve ran into the room, quickly getting soaked like the others.

"JARVIS, turn off the sprinklers." Tony glanced at Steve then looked pointedly at Thor. "Point break here had a wonderful breakfast planned for us, but it looks like the unexpected rain storm has changed our plans."

"Oh."

"What the- Tony, did you try to make me an omelet again?" Pepper had walked in from the elevator, nearly slipping on the wet floors. "I thought we talked about that."

"NO! It was Thor, he tried to make breakfast this time!" Tony looked like a five year old trying to blame something on his older brother, he even extended his arm and pointed at the God. But Thor's expression of humility told Pepper that Tony was telling the truth. This time.

"I promise that I will clean all of the mess I have made. I am so sorry man of iron."

"Yeah, whatever, at least I don't have to take a shower anymore!" Tony brightened, then he sauntered into the blackened kitchen and attempted to make a coffee in the twisted black plastic that was the coffee brewer. After a few attempts, and some unwanted advice from Clint, who had managed to not show up until after the whole ordeal, Tony gave up and decided to take everyone out for brunch. After all, it was Sunday.

The whole team walked into the diner that they had flown to in the quinjet. The normal hum of conversation stopped as people noticed whose presence they were being graced with. The Avengers ignored the attention (except for Bruce, who offered a meager wave) and sat down in a row taking up the entire bar. The waitress, looking a bit flustered and embarrassed, took their extremely large order.

"I'll have three eggs, over easy, a side of hash browns - or should it be bacon - you know what? Hash browns and bacon, and a coffee." Tony's order was first, the waitress frantically trying to keep up with his fast paced and decisive speech.

"I would like a full breakfast from this beautiful midgardian eatery please." The waitress looked a little scared of Thor's booming voice and Pepper leaned over to clear up the confusion.

"He just means the number one. And I'll have an omelet and some coffee please." The waitress seemed to calm down a little bit as Pepper spoke.

"I'll take something with a lot of calories, please." Bruce didn't like ordering at restaurants.

"The eggs and bacon with some coffee for me miss." Steve gave the waitress a smile and her face turned bright red, Clint nearly fell off his stool he was laughing so hard, Steve looked at him with confusion. "What?"

"No-nothing, just, never mind. I'll have a cheeseburger." Clint got stares from the rest of the team. He glared back and stuck with his order.

"I'll have an omelet." Natasha's no nonsense order completed the group and the waitress ran into the kitchen to deliver the - long - receipt to the chef.

Half an hour later, the team was munching on their delicious food and the restaurant had cleared out due to the loud nature of - someones - voice.

The team finished their breakfast's and returned to Stark Tower, fortunately they didn't run into any problems on the way. Natasha and Clint had to report to SHIELD for some top secret mission, so they dropped everyone off on the helicopter pad and then flew off. Thor was due for a movie marathon with Darcy, and he invited Steve along too, the girl was trying to get both men updated on all of the references. Bruce was close to a breakthrough on some disease vaccine, so he removed himself to his private lab for the rest of the day. Pepper stated she would be attending an important board meeting later ("On a Sunday?!" Tony had complained), so nobody was to interrupt her. Which left Tony by himself.

"At least you can't leave me JARVIS." Tony poured himself a glass of whiskey on the rocks.

"I wouldn't dream of it, sir." The cool voice of the AI filtered down to Tony's ears as he downed the liquid in one gulp, pouring himself another just as quickly. "Might I recommend less drinking, sir? It is only eleven in the morning."

"JARVIS, first of all it's five o'clock somewhere, and second, I'm fine, it takes more than two glasses of whiskey to get me drunk." Tony set down the bottle and carried his glass to the elevator, pressing the button for his own lab.

The elevator doors dinged open and Tony strode out. A small smile could be seen at the corner of his mouth when the familiar hum of the room returned with the lights and holographic displays.

"It's good to be home." Tony swung into his chair and waved his hand, turning on the multiple monitors around him. They flashed to life and another, quieter, hum started up. Tony loved the hum of his lab, it had become a comforting and almost soothing sound to him. He spun in his chair and gulped the rest of the whiskey down, rattling the ice cubes in the glass he set it down and began to type. The genius hadn't yet decided what exactly he wanted to work on yet, so he began by looking through various older projects that he hadn't seen in a while.

"Sir, Miss Potts is on her way." JARVIS toned.

"Alright." Tony selected a design he thought would be interesting to continue and threw it to one of the hologram tables nearby. The door to the lab slid open as he walked over to where the hologram of an odd contraption was floating.

"I just came down to tell you I'm leaving for the board meeting." Pepper had her business dress on and was holding a lot of papers and files of various sorts.

"That's nice to know." Tony turned his attention to the stunningly beautiful Pepper Potts. "Will you be back late?"

"Probably, you won't be up." Pepper replied.

"I think I might be." Tony took a step closer, but at that moment Pepper's phone rang and she pulled it out of her pocket. With an apologetic glance she answered the phone and began walking to the elevator.

"Yes, I'm on my way now….Sorry, will do, no problem…..Thanks, bye." The elevator arrived and Pepper waved to Tony, but he was already engrossed in his project, and didn't see her.

"JARVIS, run diagnostics on this piece." Tony spoke to the hidden speakers, and a line of numbers and letters began scrolling across the tabletop underneath the hologram. "Now where did I put the model of this…" Tony trailed off, searching the room around him. The hologram showed an odd tube shaped mechanical device that looked somewhat like a syringe. Next to it, on the hologram there was a chemical compound shown in a series of dizzying dots and lines.

Tony kicked around a few random pieces of metal on the ground and paced over to a box that had been pushed into a corner. He rooted through the box and finally pulled out a model of the thing shown on the hologram behind him. He then walked over to a row of freezers and pulled out a vial of shimmery silver liquid.

"Diagnostics are complete, sir. The chemical compound know as 'Zirnium' appears to be stable." Tony grunted in acknowledgment and went back to his workbench, depositing the two things on top. "It appears Doctor Banner is arriving on the elevator, sir."

"Thanks JARVIS."

The elevator doors pinged once more and out stepped Bruce Banner.

"Hey, Tony, I was wondering what project you were working on." The doctor walked over to Tony's hologram display and began reading the diagnostics.

"It's a chemical synthesis I created called Zirnium, It's supposed to give the user extremely heightened senses for a short amount of time. I actually came up with it a long time ago, but never had the need to use it. Wait, why do you ask?" Tony suddenly became suspicious of his friend's actions.

"I was actually wondering if you would come down to my lab and help me with something, it shouldn't take too long, I need more than one pair of hands for this." Bruce smiled sheepishly.

"What is it?" Tony asked bluntly. He didn't really mind helping the scientist, but he had been kind of excited about testing his Zirnium.

"I would like to test a vaccine on you, I can't do it on myself because of… the other guy… The vaccine isn't toxic so the worst it'll do is give you diarrhea." Bruce explained.

"Fine, but you owe me." Tony said, Bruce was incredulous, he hadn't actually expected Tony to accept right away.

"Oh, um, great, I have the serum in my lab downstairs." Bruce walked over to the elevator, followed by Tony. "The vaccine, if I've got the formula right, should be able to prevent quite a few of the more common diseases in southern africa."

Tony just let Bruce babble on about his cure-all vaccine, he was thinking about how boring it had been recently, there were no imminent threats to earth, no raving dictators, or alien cross-breeds. Really, Tony was kind of craving something to happen, but he knew he should be reveling in the relative peace they were experiencing now.

He blinked out of his thoughts when they arrived in Bruce's lab. The floor was swept clean and a row of deep shelves lined one wall, keeping all of the miscellaneous gadgets organized, much unlike Tony's lab. Bruce walked over to a table and made Tony sit down in a nearby chair.

"You'll want to be sitting down because you may experience some dizziness when the liquid first enters your system. I've run some simulations on the computer, but nothing is as accurate as actual testing." Tony mentally filed Bruce under the 'possible mad scientist' section in his mind. "Okay, here goes."

Bruce rubbed the skin in Tony's inner right elbow with a disinfectant wipe and put a vial of purple liquid into a syringe. He pressed the nozzle of the injector against Tony's skin and pulled the trigger, the purple liquid was immediately shot into Tony's veins. Tony clenched his teeth at the initial spike of pain, but relaxed once Bruce pulled the empty thing away.

"It may take a few minutes before the full affect should take place, then, I will inject you with a tiny amount of the pathogen, not enough to actually make you sick, but enough to tell if the vaccine is working." Bruce explained. "How do you feel now?"

"A little dizzy, but fine." Tony replied, his vision was blurring and he felt really dizzy. His arms and legs were becoming slow and numb and he was glad that he was sitting down because he was sure he would have fallen over.

"Tony?"

"What?"

"I asked you what's wrong, you're frowning." Bruce was in front of Tony now, his face masked with concern and worry.

"Just…dizzy…and numb…" Tony closed his eyes, he was suddenly feeling very tired, but his body felt like it was full of energy.

"-ony, open your eyes, Tony!" Bruce was yelling now, he felt frustrated and guilty and worried all at the same time.

"-eel so numb…too tired to open my…eyes…" Tony was breathing heavily and his head lolled from side to side. Bruce shook his shoulders, but only produced a moan from the incapacitated scientist.

"Come on, you have to open your eyes and tell me what's wrong! Tony, open your eyes!" Bruce smacked Tony, hard, leaving a bright red splotch on his cheek, and luckily, prompting the man to open his eyes.

"What was that for?" Tony could finally make a complete sentence, he glared at Bruce and felt the numbness in his arms and legs fading. "Nevermind, I think it's wearing off, I can move again."

"Really? It shouldn't have worn off so fast like that. I suppose you can go back up to your lab, I won't be administering the pathogen after that. I'd like you to call me if you feel anything weird though. Anything at all!" Bruce watched Tony stand up, he saw the man sway, but the scientist managed to stay standing. Tony nodded okay and left on the elevator.

The rest of the afternoon passed fairly quickly, Tony put away the Zirnium for another day and had been working on his iron man suit for a few hours. After the initial effects of the vaccine Bruce had given him, he had felt fine. He was just tightening some screws in the forearm piece of the Mark VIII, when a sharp pain shot through his head, he flinched and dropped the machine he was holding. He clutched at his head as another sharp stab hit him, he spun around and found no assailant though. He made a mental note to never let Bruce give him anything again. And then the pain stopped, as if it had never been there. Tony stood still for a moment, waiting for another wave of pain, but none came. He took a few deep breaths to calm his rapid pulse, and then he picked up the forearm repulser and began to work on it again.

"Hey Tony, we're going out for dinner, you want to come?" Steve stepped off the elevator and walked up behind Tony.

"Who's we?" Tony set down the machine and turned to the captain, interested only because he was suddenly very hungry.

"Me, Thor, Darcy, and Bruce if he says yes. Natasha and Clint are still out on a mission and Pepper is eating at the board meeting." Steve explained. Tony nodded and followed Steve into the elevator and down to the first floor. The rest of the crew were waiting for them in front of a limo that would drive them to whichever restaurant they chose. Tony could care less about where they ate, all he could think about was how hungry he suddenly was.

They arrived at a local hamburger and salad place, Darcy's request since it covered meat for Thor and salad for herself. Tony felt like he was about to eat the car he was so hungry, and Bruce kept giving him weird looks.

"Are you sure you haven't felt anything else weird?" Bruce asked Tony as they entered the restaurant and waited for a seat.

"Well right now for one I think I could eat a whole cow." Tony spoke through gritted teeth, his stomach was doing bellyflops.

"I see, we'll have to make sure the food gets here fast then." Bruce's advice only made Tony feel worse, he really regretted ever agreeing to one of Bruce's experiments.

When the food finally came, Tony ate more than Thor and the entire group was in slight shock. Tony didn't notice, he was too busy shoving forkful after forkful of food into his mouth. Bruce watched with a look of growing concern, he decided to take a blood sample as soon as they got back to headquarters.

The team took a good three minutes to exit the limo when it stopped in front of Stark Towers. Thor was in full on 'story telling' mode, and had to be pushed along by Darcy, which was hard since he kept trying to turn around and speak to the group as a whole. Tony was feeling woozy and had to be propped up by both Bruce and Steve, he could barely walk into the elevator.

"I love the story about your experience with a vending machine Thor, I hope next time it gives you a pop tart on the first try." Steve offered a smile to the god, who had finally finished his tale in the elevator. "I thick though, that you and Darcy ought to go watch another movie, Bruce and I are going to make sure Tony is okay."

Thor nodded and got off the elevator with Darcy, who was already broadcasting her movie choices to the entire empty room. The elevator dinged shut and Steve gave Bruce a look like 'finally, his stories were getting on my nerves' to which Bruce responded with a look of 'whatever, i'm worried about Tony'.

Bruce's lab was as impeccable as ever. That was all Tony could think about as he was led towards the seat he remembered from that morning. His head was feeling better, but his stomach felt distorted and way too full. He let out a belch as he sat down and both Bruce and Steve recoiled in disgust.

"'scuse me." Was all Tony could get out while trying not to throw up.

"Gross Tony." Steve said. "I'm out of here, Bruce, call me if you need anything."

Bruce nodded and Steve left the room. Tony closed his eyes.

"Tony, look at me. I need you to tell me what you feel. Are you still hungry?" Bruce leaned in front of Tony. Tony opened his eyes and squinted at the physicist.

"No way, I'm never eating again. I'm gonna have diarrhea for months." Tony felt sleepy all of a sudden. He tried to keep his eyes open and cooperate with Bruce because he knew how much a cure depended on information. But the lure of sleep was too much for the engineer who hadn't slept a full night in over a week, and he mumbled, trying to alert Bruce, before falling fast asleep in the chair.

Bruce sighed and let the man fall asleep. At least he wasn't hungry anymore. The physicist turned to his table of notes and began shuffling papers, he was never one for holograms and digital files.

"JARVIS, please monitor all of Tony's physical symptoms and alert me if anything changes." A ping from the AI answered Bruce and he sat down in front of his paperwork, ready to pull an all-nighter, while the engineer behind him snored softly in his slumber.

Review please! Tell me all the things you thought were funny, wrong, wished had gone differently, liked the way they were, characters that should appear, anything!

And did you spot the song reference?