Title: Together, We'll Rule The World
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters in this; Marvel does. I merely own the plot-line.
I have no beta. All mistakes are my own.
PART #3 OF THE NATASHALIE AND ANTHONY SERIES
Sometimes, Tony wonders what it would have been like if the Avengers had fought him instead of Loki. Perhaps they would have, even, if he hadn't been through Afghanistan. Maybe Iron Man would have been a villain (in which case, Tony thinks he might have called it 'Iron Bitch' because, YOLO), and the 'end of New York' would have been more 'the beginning of Tony Stark's reign'. Loki, unfortunately for him, had gone about it all wrong,
Tony likes to express his theories sometimes.
He tells Natasha, because she often listens to his crazy theories and doesn't judge (even if she does like to laugh at the hilarity of it). This time, however, she looks him dead in the eyes and shrugs. Her brown eyes bore into his own, and she strokes her cheek thoughtfully with a pale, perfectly manicured finger. "Sounds legit to me," she says calmly, like he hasn't just told her his supervillain name (and its Iron Bitch, for Thor's sake). "How about we tag-team it?" She suggests.
"Like, the Adventures of IronWidow as they take over the whole motherfucking world?" Tony suggests, with interest.
"Something like that," agrees Natasha slowly. "Although I think we'd have to keep the title a little more PG so they'd be willing to publish a comic book in our name, you know?" She smiles wryly at him and casually pours herself a glass of champagne before leaning back against the kitchen bench. She cocks her head to one side, watching him as though he were an interesting specimen made to be studied, and undresses him with her eyes. She starts with the raw feelings and emotions on his face, and simply finds great interest in the mask he has concocted for himself. The way he hides himself behind a fake persona is ingenious, really, and Natasha wonders how he does it. But, somehow, he does.
She can't be any more intrigued by him than she already is – and he knows it.
Which, probably, means that their supervillain tag-team wouldn't work out too well. She'd get much too distracted. It's just lucky for her that he wears a mask in the field. Otherwise, she's sure that she'd have died a thousand times over just watching the raw emotion on his face.
Because (although she'd never tell anyone that she thinks this), it's beautiful.
They're in the field when Natasha accidentally refers to him as Iron Bitch over the coms. She's not quite sure what she was thinking, but knows that it's going to come back to bite her from years to come.
"There are fifty of them coming towards me," Tony is shrieking, probably sounding a little more distressed than he probably should be, and nobody really takes him seriously because Tony has been seen stressing over a paper-cut, so… Melodrama is so obviously the man's middle name.
"I'm sure there are," snaps Clint, in a tone that suggests he's rolling his eyes. They all here the familiar shiink of one of his arrows being released, and the ugly squelch that they have all come to recognise as the death of one of the slug-like monsters they're up against today.
It's like any other battle, really. Except, today there's no actual 'bad guy'. Reed Richards just had some lab troubles, and now suddenly the Avengers are being called on to investigate the aftermath. But, whatever. They'd all been getting bored anyway (or, as bored as you can get between Clint and Tony's occasional dance-off), and had welcomed this job with open arms. Thor was now covered in sticky green stuff because he'd surged forwards to give a 'ReedSlug' (as Tony had now dubbed them) a massive hug in thanks, then realised how bad the idea was when he couldn't move properly afterwards. For the inconvenience, Thor had bashed the ReedSlug into oblivion with Mjolnir.
"No, like, seriously," Tony snaps. "Ahh, shit, it's literally got me all up in its shit. This suit is going to be a nightmare to clean. Got that, J? Remind me to program Dummy's fire extinguisher with magical cleaning abilities, alongside planning date-night with Pep… whoa that was close…"
Natasha snorts loudly with laughter, then spins to avoid a slimy green glob of goo and shoots two bullets right into the (very visible) pink brain which she can see through its head. It's gross, yet fascinating at the same time. The slug ceases to move as the bullets pierce its brain, and collapses into a large puddle of slime. The Black Widow wrinkles her nose in disgust. She taps her ear to activate her com, then says; "you're Iron Bitch. I'm sure you'll think of something."
A pause.
"Iron Bitch?" Clint snorts. "What the Hell?"
"My supervillain name." Says Tony brightly. "Nat and I are going to take over the world. Whoops."
"A supervillain by the name of Iron Bitch?" This time, it's Cap who intervenes, wearily. "That's even worse than Doctor Doom."
"Nah, see, I'd be a supervillain with sass." Tony says, and there's a pause as the sound of lasers erupts from his end, and then he whoops loudly. "Take that, ReedSlugs! Damn, I'm good. Oi – so if I'm going to be an evil mastermind, should I shave my head and buy a cat?"
"Not at all," Thor butts in.
"Uh, fine." Tony mutters. "Well, I'm going to get this over with. Iron Bitch, out."
He clicks off; not before hearing Clint's loud bark of laughter, however.
"Will someone please explain the conversation that I just heard over the coms?" Fury snaps later, at debrief. "Agent Fitz found it so extremely hilarious, that he broadcasted the whole damn thing to the whole of SHIELD."
Tony looks at him, dead serious. "He didn't find it funny." He says as Natasha's lips twitch with the ghost of a smile. "He just took it as a threat and thought it was necessary to go ahead and warn everybody about 'the Adventures of IronWidow as they take over the whole motherfucking world'. That's going to be a sentence to be feared, one day."
Then, he walks out; hips swaying extravagantly and a kiss blown over his shoulder as he strides out with too much swagger probably to be considered healthy.