A/n: I have nothing to say to defend myself. Nothing at all. But, hey, now I've written a real avengers fic :D

I'd never given much thought into how I would die—I was too busy with getting laid and hacking into top secret files—but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this.

I stared at the dumbfuck who had actually—I shuddered to think of it—beaten me.

I was hoping I'd go in the middle of banging some hot blonde or in a giant explosion, or maybe after doing something noble and getting sucked into the other edge of the universe.

I knew that if I'd never been dumb enough to move to Forks, I would have gotten something less suck-tackular. As disappointed as I was, I couldn't regret this. When life offers you a dream on a silver platter that's been all tied up with leather and handcuffs and—

Oh yeah, Frost Giant walking towards me about to kill me.

Well, fuck.

My mother's butler drove me to the airport in our spare hummer limo. I kept the windows shut tight. I didn't want to be seen taking the walk—well, ride—of shame. I opened another bottle of soda and cranked ACDC higher to distract myself. Jarvis wouldn't say anything about either.

As we passed the people waiting in security, I was so glad I'd be going on a private jet. Only having one carry-on item would suck since I didn't quite have the miniature Arc Reactor up and running yet and my multitude of gadgets would probably run out of power.

I was headed to this little town in the middle of nowhere, USA. It was such a tiny-ass place that I'd never be kept entertained. I knew that already. I'd had to spend every summer there until I was thirteen and told mom that if she dragged me back there one more time I'd reprogram her alarm clock to wake her up at random times in the middle of the night. The last few years Howard, my dad, took me to see the Large Hadron Collider instead.

That was where I was going—not the hadron collider, that got boring after I managed to make a smaller version in my room overnight—to Hicksville.

My mother's farewell had been as stiff as I was expecting. I felt bad for a moment— who would help her fix the automated everything in our house when it broke? But hey, she was an adult with a good-sized fortune, so she was on her own.

I sat on the plane, tinkering with the Arc Reactor until we started getting close. Then I had to get up and walk all the way over to the Helicopter in the back of the plane that would drop me off at Howard's house. God, so much work.

Howard had been fairly nice about the whole thing. Well, we assumed he was nice about it, anyway. He'd just grunted from under the hood of a car, but I always assumed that meant whatever I wanted it to. Anyway, when the helicopter landed on the roof of his house—my house now, I supposed—I did find a note so that meant that he at least remembered I was coming.

"Dear Tony," It started, "Don't expect me around too much. The workshop is mine. Don't bug me while I'm there even if the house is on fire. Those walls are fireproof. The third floor is yours. You have a full suite including your own workshop, but you only get one so don't fuck it up. If you need anything, I've equipped the house with an AI version of Jarvis. God knows he was the only thing I was sad to see go. I suppose it's good you're here. Now it's possible that I'll have something vaguely resembling intelligent conversation for once. Not likely, but possible."

I smiled for a moment but then stopped. No one had to know that that was the nicest thing he'd ever done for me.

I went down to my new bedroom and had one of the servants put my things away for me. In the meantime, I stared out the window. The town itself was fairly far away, but it was so damn small. It was like an alien world. Dammit, all of a sudden that ride at Disney world I'd heard rumors about made sense.

I asked JARVIS for some statistics on this town. He told me that there were three hundred and fifty seven inbred numbskulls attending. Well, that was boring. It would only take them about an hour to all get in line to kiss my ass.

Some of you might be wondering how I could do that being as rough as I am. Obviously the bad boy thing gets a lot of attention, but it doesn't help that I'm sexy as all fuck. No, I was never the traditional "hot guy," big and buff with impossibly blond hair and flawlessly tanned skin. I was wiry with dark hair and the only reason I wasn't as white as your average engineer is because part of my mom's family is from the Mediterranean. But I'm smart and rich and have the biggest sweetest brown eyes this side of baby Labradors. Yeah, I didn't relate to idiots well, but I could pretend to like them for long enough to get them to do what I wanted.

You might think that with how confident I was that I'd have the entire population eating out of the palm of my hand I'd be excited to take over the town, but I wasn't. Hell, I would have rather had my balls cut off with a rusty chainsaw than have gone to school the next day. I knew there was punishment, but this! No, I knew this was going to be hell. I was smart enough to be accepted into MIT two years before I would even graduate, but my mom kind of tore up my acceptance letter and sent me here to "finish my high school career." Fuck high school! I was ready to be out, but you steal one little nuke launch code and brag about it where a maid can year you and poof, then you're stuck in the middle of bum-fuck Washington with Howard instead of getting your science on and winning a Nobel Prize.

And to make it all worse, I was being forced to go to public school. I knew of the horrors that would await me: terrible food, crowded classrooms full of stupid people, and teachers who were barely qualified to teach more than the goddamn alphabet. I was certain that my IQ would drop by fifty points by just stepping foot in the building. I was at least prepared for some stares. Being the city rich kid stepping foot into their plebeian building was enough, but my dad also owned the company that produced most of their cell phones and laptops and so my pictures had been plastered all over tabloids since I was a baby and my move was all the gossip people seemed to care about recently.

Thankfully, I'd learned at a young age to dress like a normal person just to spite my parents. I would have worn my Black Sabbath t-shirt and faded jeans even if I wasn't actively trying to blend in. As it was, I had Howard's driver drop me off a little away from the school so nobody would notice the limousine.

My first class was Bio, which, to be honest, I wasn't super great at (Come on. Really? It's barely a fucking science), but my tutors had still crammed enough into my brain for me to keep up with any college-level course. And as Mrs. What's-her-face began to drone about Natural Selection, I found myself nodding off to sleep. I barely ever sleep when I'm properly caffeinated, but her voice just kept droning on and on and this was sucha kindergarten topic and I was up late last night tinkering with the arc reactor. Obviously, I was totally in the right for trying to take a nap, but apparently that kind of behavior was frowned upon at Marvel High School. She slapped her hand on my desk and nearly made me fall out of my chair.

"The fuck?" I asked eloquently. When did she move? The classroom giggled.

"Mr. Stark, I am aware that this is an entirely new environment for you, but it is rude to sleep in the middle of the class, and it is against school policy to curse. If I hear or see that again, I'm going to have to give you a detention."

Great, this one was a bitch. I scowled and nodded. She turned and with an overly pleased huff, waddled back to the front of the room. She might have thought she was letting me off easy, but I sure as hell wasn't gonna do the same for her.

"Before your nap, Mr. Stark, we were talking about Darwin's work on—"

"The Galapagos Islands. Yeah. And then he published On the Origin of Speciesand it caused a huge ripple effect in the entire time period, and most people got what he was saying totally wrong anyway and to this day, people still think that humans evolved from monkeys."

What's-her-face blinked and turned back around to the chalk board (Jesus, people still used those things? If I cared, I would totally give a donation to give these people some awesome hologram tech. I mean, I thought schools were all at least required to have touch-screens on the walls). Feeling victorious, put my head back down on my desk.

God, I felt good about making some stupid old hag seem dumber than she already was. What would become of me? I was going to rot here.

When the class was over, I hurried to get out the door before What's-her-face could write me up like she threatened or, worse, before someone could talk to me and cover me in stupid. In my rush to leave, I ended up bumping into a guy with really gorgeous arms and nearly falling to the floor. Thankfully, those sexy arms got me before I did.

(Spoiler alert: I am about as straight as silly string. I like the ladies too, but show me a beefcake with a huge—anyway, if you're offended by that type of thing, you should probably stop reading now. It only gets worse.)

Nameless-nice-arms guy's eyebrows rose in faint recognition after he picked up my books for me.

"Hey, you're Tony Stark. You know, that was pretty funny back there. Not many people can talk back to Mrs. Lacey and get away with it."

I shrugged. Despite my awesomeness and incredible intellect, I didn't get compliments often. Well, not sincere ones anyway.

"It's probably the money. She doesn't want to mess with big ol' bad Howard Stark's son."

Which was laughable, because Howard would probably encourage it, the bastard.

"Yeah, but you actually knew your shit. Everyone was saying that you're just some rich spoiled brat."

"Don't be silly, there's much more to me than just that."

He had a really cute smile and an even cuter laugh, I thought, before remembering that it's rude to stare at people mid-conversation. It was then he seemed to realize that he was still holding my books and gave them back to me with a more awkward laugh.

"Well, there you go. It was nice meeting you."

"What's your name?" I asked before he and his gorgeous arms walked out of my life forever (and wouldn't that be tragic; it was rare to find anybody with a sense of humor, let alone anybody who found me funny.)

"Clint. Clint Barton."

The conversation was definitely getting awkward now because neither of us would have anything else to say. I did the only thing I could think of to prevent it from slipping away.

"Well, Clint. I could use somebody to show me the school—the important stuff, I mean—not the crappy shit. And you know, if I make you laugh then you can have an amusing buddy, I don't have to talk to other people I don't know, it's really win-win—"

"Alright Tony." He wasn't exactly laughing but I could see the amusement there, "I'm glad you asked. I'd love to have a piece of rich, man candy on my arms all day."

Oh yeah. I was definitely keeping this guy.

"Well, then lead the way, gentle steed. My next class is trigonometry taught by," I looked down at my schedule, "A Mr. Clark and I need to know where the vending machines are if I'm going to stay awake."

He was laughing again and I began to feel like the day would turn out to be better than I thought. I was wrong, of course.

The trip to the vending machine and consequent Mountain Dew didn't help my trig class. Why the hell was I put into trig in the first place? I could do calculus-based physics with my eyes closed. While stinking drunk (and I knew this for a fact, because I've tried this before). Ugh, this was supposed to be advanced and shit too. Maybe I could just show my teacher the tattered remains of my MIT acceptance letter and he would just give me an A for the course.

Anyway, since I didn't want my Arc Reactor confiscated even though I was itching to take it out of my bag, I spent most of the class thinking about Clint's arms (he had Phys Ed—ewww—and said he would come and take me to lunch after class ended) and trying to decide who was the most attractive in the classroom. After myself, there was a brunette sitting diagonally across from me with a hell of a rack. I wanted to motorboat those titties, damn. And she was an overzealous nerd of sorts too, so she was often raising her hand as though anybody else would bother to answer and it made her chest jiggle and oh, if I wasn't so practiced at being a stealth chest starer, I could have popped a boner then and there.

After class, I watched Tits go her own way and Clint came up to me looking a little sweaty in a very attractive way. The former spikes in his hair were a little flattened and it was a good look for him. I followed the other teen to the cafeteria.

My god, that food looked frightening. Was it even food? I was expecting disgusting, but shit. I mean the pizza was square, what the fuck? At least I didn't have to pay a lot for it and bought nothing but a harmless looking salad because that seemed the safest thing to eat by far.

Clint sat me down next to two of his friends, both girls. They were a pair of pretty attractive redheads and I wondered why such an inbred little town had so many attractive people. The one with the dark, auburn hair was named Natasha Romanova. She had a pretty face, but didn't seem to smile that much, which at first was unsettling, but you grew to get used to it. Apparently she was Russian, but I couldn't detect a hint of an accent. The second redhead was named Virginia Potts, but everybody called her Pepper. She had a sunny, warm face and freckles. Unlike Natasha, she seemed nice enough. I was beginning to settle in with them when a group of people came in and it was like the entire cafeteria quieted. What the hell? Nobody was that awed by my presence and I was Tony fucking Stark.

Anyway, this group sat down at a table on the other side of the cafeteria. I looked them all over. Damn, I was starting to think that an experimental sexy serum had leaked into the water supply. First to sit down was a really big guy, tall, muscular with long blond hair and a better beard than most high schoolers could grow. On his left there was an incredibly beefy guy with wild red hair. Oh his other side there was another blond who looked like Legolas's slightly-less-gay brother. To Legolas's right there was a stern looking guy with long black hair. Interrupting this sausage parade was a lovely girl also with long black hair and quite the bosom.

Finally on the end, almost sitting away from the rest was a guy that just seemed different from the rest. He had medium length black hair and cheekbones that looked like they could cut. He was pale, paler than everyone else at the table. He sat slightly hunched over, whereas the others were straight and proud. He seemed sort of sad and the way he kept looking at blond beard man reminded me of a kicked puppy. There was something about him that fascinated me.

"Those are the Aesirs," Pepper said to me, "I know, it's hard not to stare at first."

"I wasn't staring!" I said a bit too quickly.

Clint rolled his eyes.

"Who are they?" I asked, ignoring him.

"They're like this group of adoptive siblings and they all live with this doctor. They don't talk to many people and thus are shrouded in much 'mystery," She answered, using air quotes.

"Some people think they're vampires," Natasha said with a completely straight face.

"Eh, werewolves are cooler," Clint shrugged.

Neither of those things seemed appealing to me and I looked back at the group.

"What are their names?"

"Oh, they're all weird and Scandinavian. The one on the far left is Volstagg. Then Thor. Then Thandral, then Hogun, then Sif and the last one is Loki."

I frowned, "Thor?"

"Yeah, their adoptive dad is like some sort of mythology nut."

"Jeeze, and I thought Anthony was bad."

Pepper paid about as much attention to me as I did to Clint. "They're all really weird, though. Be careful."

I tried to head her warnings, but let's face it: Starks have never been good at heading warnings.

All of them were beautiful, really, and I would have paid good money to let any of them fuck me, but I couldn't get that sad-looking one out of my mind. Which was really unfortunate because my next class was physics and guess who was sitting there with no other open seats but beside him? Okay, I was a little late, but the teacher—Mr. Raney—glared at me until I scuttled off to the seat beside the pretty boy. Loki. That was his name, Loki. Being this close to him, I could see he had some of the most striking aqua eyes I had ever seen. It took all of my self-control not to stare.

He gave me an odd look as I sat down and took out my notebook (not to take notes of course—one look at the chalk board said this was baby stuff like Newton's Laws) and began to sketch the arc reactor. I kept missing a component to stabilize it and I wasn't quite sure what it was.

It was about ten minutes through the lecture when I realized that Loki had yet to stop staring at me. I tensed because, what the fuck? It was rude, creepy on so many levels, and not fucking fair. I wanted to do that, dammit!

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye and he immediately looked away, wearing a pinched expression like he was confused about something.

Again I ask: What the fuck?

At some point, he somehow moved slightly closer to me and it was creeping me the fuck out. I wanted to say something. Normally, I'd have no problem turning and asking him on a sham of a date before taking him back home with me. Howard was in his workshop. He wouldn't notice, and even if he did he wouldn't care. But there was something odd about Loki that put a shiver down my spine. He didn't say one word to me, but I felt like just by looking at me he knew my life story— and not just the shit in the magazines, the things that I'd never told anyone. I briefly wondered if this was what victims of serial killers felt like while they were being stalked but then immediately cut that train of thought from my mind because it seemed entirely too possible. This guy wasn't staring because he was a fan of Stark Industries.

When the bell finally rang, I didn't move. I felt too terrified to move, like he would take me by my neck and drag me off into the night and I suddenly wondered if those vampire rumors were true. He definitely looked the part, even if the rest of the Aesirs didn't.

I saw him get out of his chair out of the corner of my eye and froze as he brushed against me to get past. He was tall. That shouldn't have been my first thought, but his legs went on for miles. He looked oddly stern as he walked away, thankfully not sparing a glance over his shoulder.

When he was gone, I took a deep breath I hadn't realized I was holding (and what the fuck? I was a Stark and we didn't get scared) and scrambled out of the classroom to find Clint.

I dragged Clint to the guidance counselor with me because my classes were terrible and not challenging and if they were going to make me suffer through this, they could at least put me through all AP classes at the senior level. And as fate would have it, Creepy Pretty Boy Loki was already there, trying to get to his guidance counselor and as soon as I stepped into the room, he looked at me and I froze again.

I felt like I needed to shrink away from his gaze, it was so intense (and so creepy—seriously dude, stop with the staring already). But he frowned and was called back in before the awkward choked me or something. When he came back out, he looked again and I pointedly looked away from him. I was starting to see Pepper's point about the Aesirs being weird.

I got all of my classes changed, except physics and P.E. which was the last class of the day.

And let me just say, Fuck PE. It's bad enough on paper, since it gives the muscle-bound idiots a reason to believe that they're better than the geniuses, but the actual experience is far, far worse. I refused to dress out and got a zero for participation (if you saw those shorts, you would refuse to dress out too). If the coach wasn't so hot (he had an ass that definitely looked tapable) I probably would have cursed him out too. A dodge ball smacked me in the back of my head while I was sitting on the bleachers.Worst of all, I somehow retained a locker room odor on my clothes and it started to drizzle as I walked around the block to where Happy was parked.

I wanted to punch someone in the face. I wanted to punch Howardin the face. I wanted to punch that stupid maid who had tattled on me in the face.

All in all, this was a terrible first day.