For two hours now, Captain America and Iron Man had bickered across the cramped table of Stark's favorite Chinese food restaurant, and had succeeded in scaring away every other customer from the place, but they had yet to reach any common ground. For Steve, it was a simple matter of constitutional rights for metahumans, but Tony wanted a tracking system for the whole group of them.
Neither would budge, and they had to reach an agreement to present for S.H.I.E.L.D., but so far the closest they were coming was to blows.
"Fortune cookie?" An elderly Chinese woman had appeared soundlessly at their elbows, dressed in all black and carrying an ornate platter with two lone fortune cookies.
"Yeah sure," Tony snapped, snatching a cookie off the tray and barely pausing in his speech. He continued his rant before the words even finished coming out of the woman's mouth. Steve gave her a terse smile at her and took his as well, wrapping it in his napkin. "So like I was saying, a little accountability, and some industry standards for the whole..."
"No no!" She interrupted again. She pointed first at Tony's fortune cookie, discarded on his plate, then at Steve's. "Eat it now."
The two glanced at each other.
"We're in the middle of a business meeting here, and-"
"That's very kind of you, ma'am, but-"
"Eat!" She barked, smile stretching even further. The old woman backed away and disappeared through a beaded curtain into the kitchen, and the two Avengers were suddenly alone in the restaurant.
Tony popped his into his mouth and pulled the fortune out from between his teeth.
"You not going to eat yours?"
Steve shrugged. "I don't like fortune cookies. So to get back to what you were saying..."
"Well, then give it to me," Tony reached for the napkin, and Steve snatched it away.
"No, it's mine!"
"But you don't even like them, so what's the point?" he complained, still reaching. "You're just doing this to spite me now, aren't you?"
That was exactly what he was doing, but he wouldn't give Tony that satisfaction.
"I changed my mind, I want the fortune," Steve cracked open the cookie a little more aggressively than necessary and crunched at the shards of stale, sickly sweet cookie as he unraveled the fortune. "What's your say?"
Tony read from his slip of paper aloud and what he said was mirrored on Cap's own fortune.
"A journey soon begins its prize reflected in another's eyes when what you see is what you lack then selfless friendship will change you back... What the hell's that supposed to mean?" Stark laughed, and it was just a little too cruel.
Steve threw down his napkin and pushed back from his plate, slipping his fortune into his wallet and throwing down some cash. That would piss him off.
"Well, this has been fun, but I'm done," and ignoring Tony's indignant sputters, he slipped on his jacket and left. Something about the restaurant, maybe it was the temperature or food poisoning, was starting to make him dizzy.
It wasn't until the next morning that either of them realized anything was wrong; Tony Stark had fallen asleep on the couch in his lab, as he so often did, and Steve Rogers in his own bed in his own room. But that was not where they woke up.
Stark- or was he Rogers now?- heard his counterpart screaming and cursing long before he found his way to him. Tony crashed through the door of his room. Instead of it being moderately funny to see Tony trash his own room like that, all Steve could think was how it was eerie to see himself out of body like that.
Stark clasped his hands, Steve's hands, and waiting for the freak out to end.
"How are you not freaking out? How is this happening? I'm you! You're me! I can't be you! Patriotism is not your thing, it's mine and you're going to ruin my image and be awful and how will we ever explain this to the others? And I don't know how to fly the suit! What about Pepper? I wouldn't dare put my hands on Pepper, Tony, I swear to God, but what can I even tell her!"
The babbling continued for a while, and finally Tony held up a hand to silence him.
"Listen, I think we both know what's happened here," Tony said. "Haven't you ever seen Freaky Friday?"
They stared at each other for a long moment.
Stark spoke first. "The goatee isn't really a good look for me is it?" Steve's hands flew to his face, Tony's face, and he sputtered.
"Is that a joke? You think those damn fortune cookies made us like this?"
"Of course not," Tony said. "That would be outrageous. You think the power of friendship is going to swap us back? And besides, yesterday wasn't Friday, it was Tuesday. Freaky Tuesday? How lame does that sound?"
"Then what the hell are you getting at?"
"Well, Captain, who do you know who likes to fuck with our heads like this?"
Tony sat back, satisfied, and watched his own face furrow in thought. When Steve lit up with understanding, he mock applauded.
"Alright, you've got my voice now, right?" Steve said. "Call in the Avengers. We've got to track down Loki."
It took 3 hours to explain, 1 to get Natasha and Clint to stop laughing at them, and 7 to actually find the Trickster himself. As it turned out, Thor was to blame. He had gone to visit his brother, and released him from his prison to visit their mother together in Asgard, but Loki had slipped away and a doppelgänger had returned in his place.
"You two made it so easy," he cackled. "It was taking candy from children, truly." They had all gathered atop Stark Tower as the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.S. hauled the magician away in chains. The spell had been easy enough to reverse, and now the Avengers sagged against each other, exhausted from the fight.
"Still can't believe Steve thought this was some Lindsey Lohan movie," Natasha mumbled to Clint, just loud enough for the Captain to hear. When he turned to glare at her, she was suddenly all too intrigued with adjusting her glock. Clint snickered.
Director Fury, for the first time, paused in his overseeing of the soldiers holding on to Loki, and turned to stare at first Natasha, then over to Captain America and Iron Man.
"You mean Freaky Friday?"
Tony chimed in "Oh yes, that's what Steve thought," he replied, smug and barely holding back laughter. Without turning to look at him, Steve reached over and slapped him upside the head.
"With all due respect, Director," Steve started, but Fury interrupted.
"I don't suppose your time... switched had brought you any closer to a conclusion to the metahuman debate I've asked for you to agree on," he said, as cold as ever.
Steve and Tony glanced at each other.
"Well, I mean..."
"Not exactly..."
Reflection
I think that my work of fanfiction lies fairly close to the original, using elements from both the Avengers comic series and the movies. I played with Captain America and Iron Man's dynamic, where in both the comics and the movies, they have a rivalry going on. In the comics specifically is where I pulled the majority of their argument, from the Civil War story arc, in which Steve and Tony argue over the fate of metahumans and how they should be dealt with by S.H.I.E.L.D. I also think that the two of them would have solved a problem like body switching fairly similarly to the way I described, by using the Avengers team, but also being rude to each other the whole time.. I also think that an incident such as that happening, in which Loki creates havoc for the Avengers universe in such a way is fairly viable for Loki's character. My piece of fanfiction follows basic story structure in that it has the exposition of the two of them exposing an underlying conflict, then the inciting incident being that they've had their body's switched, and that they solve their problem and return to the way things were before.