So, explanation time: A friend of mine and I play Tony Stark and Logan, respectively, in an RPG. They ended up as drinking buddies, and then we started joking about shipping them together. We haven't done it in the game (and won't, Logan at least is already seeing someone), but I couldn't let the crack pairing go. There's already some good fic out there but not nearly enough, and I want to add to it.

This will end up as a series of fics, each based on a one or two word prompt. I'll be posting them as they are finished. At the moment I'm not planning on writing any actual sex (this being my first slash pairing and all) but if that happens I'll change the rating. As it stands it'll be high anyway for cursing and groping.

Enjoy!

Teammates

Logan thought Tony Stark was an arrogant prick, which is saying a lot coming from a man with an ego the size of a small planet. This whole Avengers thing had gone to his head since he'd been the first approached to join the initiative. Didn't help any he boasted a genius-level intelligence and numerous advanced degrees in engineering and physics, or that he was CEO and namesake of a billion-dollar international corporation. He was a pretty playboy who seemed more interested in boozing it up than in saving the world.

Tony wasn't sure what to think of the auxiliary member of the Avengers, brought in whenever his unique skills were required, those "skills" apparently being a nasty temper and the willingness to gut first and ask questions later. Tony grudgingly admitted the other man was good for infiltration when that tactic was necessary but the Canadian also had a disturbing capacity for violence and a serious lack of remorse in such cases. Couple that with an annoying tendency to grunt monosyllabically when spoken to and Tony was pretty sure the guy was just a dumb thug with a third-grade vocabulary.

So of course the two of them ended up having to work together closely on one particular case. Steve had brooked no arguments, saying their unique skills qualified them more than anyone else on the team, and were Cap any other man he likely would have told them to man up and quit their bitching; as it was he just told them to get moving.

"Yer makin' a lot o' noise there, Tin Man." Logan was leaned up against the building they were investigating.

Tony glared at him. Not that Logan could see it behind the armor, but he was glaring. Hard. "The armor's made with sound-dampeners, I'm not that loud. And it's Iron Man." Did his voice sound petulant?

The Wolverine looked back at him. He thought Tony was whining but it was hard to tell with the mechanized voice from the suit. "To anyone else ya might be silent, but I ain't just anybody." He mostly just liked snarking at his teammate.

"For our purposes, then, I'm quiet enough. Shut up and figure out how we're getting inside, I had too much coffee earlier."

Logan bared his teeth in amusement. He wondered what Stark would look like doing the 'I gotta pee' dance while suited up. "Stick close to the shadows," he said as he slipped away, body crouched with one hand held in a fist with his wrist straight, should he find the need to pop his claws. He heard Tony muttering behind him but ignored it.

Jarvis was telling Tony everything he needed to know about his surroundings. What Logan picked up on with his senses, his suit told him: there was a warm body just inside the door they were passing by in favor of one further down that was unmanned, and the place was on high security.

"C'mon, super genius, gonna need ya to crack the code on this place."

"What, you can't just claw it up?" The look Logan gave him was mildly terrifying, all bared teeth and crazy eyes. "Okay, okay." He directed Jarvis to do his job, which only took moments but felt like an eternity.

Logan heard the pop of the lock releasing and pushed the door open smoothly, quietly, stepping into a dimly lit corridor. "Where we goin'?" he asked.

"Left," Tony replied after Jarvis gave him the answer. He had the blueprints uploaded to the AI and boldly walked in front of his teammate since he was the one with the map. He thought he heard Logan snigger and ignored it in favor of, oh, actually doing his job. They took the various turns together, Tony slightly in the lead, until they came to the room that held the data they'd been sent to retrieve. Jarvis had a slightly harder time breaking the code this time but it happened soon enough, at least for Tony.

Logan resisted the urge to growl impatiently. He hated missions like this where he had to rely on someone else, especially someone else's technology. He'd seen what the Iron Man armor could do, knew what Tony was capable of, and he trusted him insofar that they were on the same team. He heard the lock click and put his hand against the latch to open it, but a robotic hand on his arm stopped him.

"There are people in there," Tony said quietly.

"I know, I can smell 'em."

"This isn't a kill mission, Wolverine." He knew Logan was aware of that but there was something about the other man that bothered him.

"I know that, Stark. You wanna take that hand off me?" Logan glared at him until he complied. "I got gas bombs to take 'em out, won't affect either of us. I ain't a complete animal, bub."

Tony made a 'hmmm' noise but stepped aside. He watched Logan crack the door and roll the small containers across the floor, the occupants of the room too busy eating pizza and poking at keyboards to take notice before they were slumping over in their chairs. "You're up," Logan told him.

The download of the data and then the upload of the virus took ten minutes during which Logan paced around, sticking his head out in the hallway repeatedly.

"Could you stop that?" Tony asked. "It's three in the damn morning and they're on a skeleton crew, not to mention I can kind of see through walls and there's no one nearby." Jarvis made a comment about letting sleeping dogs lie and was ignored.

"Makin' ya nervous, boy?"

Tony snorted. "You just call me 'boy', Logan? You can't be that much older than me, you could be the older brother I would have devised a way to off by now."

"Ya don't know the half of it. Almost done there, Flyboy?"

"Must you keep calling me unimaginative nicknames? I know you've got a third-grade education but really, I've heard five-year-olds with better smack-talking skills." He checked the progress of the upload. "Yeah, done here. Now let's get out before someone catches us."

They'd have done just that if things had gone smoothly. Tony hated being shot at with a fiery passion even when bullets couldn't pierce his armor. He turned to see how Logan was doing and found him crouched over a body, blood barely visible on his uniform in the dark and more obvious on his hand and claws. There was another body a few feet away. "Ya wanna take care o' them?" Logan asked evenly, nodding back towards the men with the guns that were still alive.

"I don't kill people," Tony replied.

"Then blast the fuckin' ceiling and block 'em off so we can get outta here." It came out as a growl. Logan was glad for the armored mask, he didn't really want to see the horror on his face. It was part of his job, part of who he was, but he'd seen that look on his friends' faces before, seen them turn away from him for the things he needed to do that they couldn't handle. Why it should matter that Tony might look at him that way, he didn't know. They hadn't worked together for very long and he kind of hated the guy anyway.

Tony sighed and lifted his hand, activating the repulsor beam on the palm. The beam hit the ceiling and brought rubble down on the gunmen, spilling it onto the floor as he moved his hand to direct the beam until there was a sizable portion of debris between them. The gunmen fired again but most of the bullets went wide, or so Tony thought until Logan grunted in pain.

"Don't worry 'bout me," Logan growled, clutching his side as he grabbed Tony's arm and hauled him down the hallway to the exit. "It'll heal," he said when Tony stopped him a few blocks away. Logan stuck two fingers into one of the bullet holes in his uniform, ripping the material a little. "See?"

Tony did see but that didn't make seeing him get shot any easier. "Fine, you're fine, this is all fine. Let's get back to HQ." Before Logan could protest he'd grabbed him under the arms and activated the suit's flight mechanisms. He was pretty sure he could hear the other man cursing up a storm and found he didn't much care. They landed a short while later on the roof.

Logan extricated himself quickly, smacking Tony's hands away. "Coulda gotten back on my own."

"Right, 'cause I want Cap breathing down my neck wondering why I let you run off to a strip joint to unwind. No fucking thanks." Tony got his faceplate off, suddenly feeling the need to breathe fresh air instead of the filtered kind, to cool off his skin which always sweat inside the armor at least a little no matter what.

"What the hell is yer problem, pal?" Logan asked, following Tony inside.

"Oh, gee, I dunno. Could be the dead guys back at the facility." The rest of the headpiece came off next and he rolled his head, feeling joints pop in a satisfying manner. "No one was supposed to die."

Logan sneered at him, drawing on the anger from the pain that was now but a faint memory. "Guy's got a gun pointed at me I ain't gonna just let that pass."

"You've got metal on your bones, just punch them in the face and they'll go down. Throw them into a wall. Kick them! Just do anything but kill them!" He was almost angry enough to throw his helmet – almost. He'd never hear the end of it from Jarvis, though, and he didn't want to piss of the AI that controlled his home and his suit.

"What you don't seem to understand, Flyboy, is that this is what I do. Ya don't think Rogers knows that?" Logan stalked across the main room at the top of the building, a huge thing that housed a lot of the technology the team used, including the long table where meetings took place. He knew the argument would just keep going if he tried to walk away but he needed to get space between them. "He knew it might be necessary and for all he's a huge fucking Boy Scout he also knows the difference between fantasy and reality."

He stopped when there was about 20 feet between them. "And don't tell me you've never killed. I know what ya did to the Ten Rings camp after ya came home from bein' a POW."

Tony really, really did not like the sneer on Logan's face. "Don't you fucking dare compare that to this!" he shouted. "They were holding women and children hostage, killing the men, and those bastards were working with Stane. If I hadn't gone in there and done that it would have just kept happening." He was almost shaking with rage by this point, pointing a finger at Logan like that was going to somehow make his point for him.

"Justify it all ya want, pal, but the world doesn't work the way you seem to think it does. Sometimes people have to die in order to get things done. I deliberately didn't kill any of the eggheads in there and I only took out the gunmen who were a threat. How many people have you killed indirectly? I've seen you take down buildings, take out vehicles, just because ya didn't watch the life drain out o' their eyes that somehow makes ya better than me? Yer a fuckin' hypocrite, Stark."

Before Tony realized what he was doing he was striding across the room, heedless of the warning look on Logan's face, the one that said 'Come any closer and you won't like what happens.' "The difference is I don't butcher people."

Logan's hand shot out to grip the front of Tony's armor where the faceplate would have normally covered, jerking the shorter man close. "Say that again and you'll find out just how much of a butcher I am."

Tony felt his heart flutter, more terrified now than he had been earlier because he'd never been within a few inches of Wolverine close to a berserker rage, certainly not on the receiving end of it. He brought up his hand still encased in armor but was interrupted from blasting Logan by Cap entering the room.

"Let him go, Wolverine."

"Stay out o' this, Cap," Logan growled, never taking his eyes off Tony. "Ain't yer business."

Steve was in civilian clothes but still managed to look intimidating. "It's my business when we can hear the shouting down the hallway. And when you're manhandling your teammate like he's Victor Creed. Let him go and walk away."

Tony wasn't so proud that he didn't appreciate the intervention. He was quite literally staring death in the face but he was surprise to see something like grief cross Logan's face in a grimace before he let him go and stalked out of the room.

"I'd steer clear of him for awhile, Tony. Takes him some time to get himself back under control."

"Why the hell is he on the team, Steve? He's a fucking animal."

Cap sighed, rubbing a hand over his face and suddenly looking very tired. "You think he kills so easily, that it doesn't even faze him and doesn't take anything away from him. I've seen that man do things that would give you nightmares, above and beyond what you yourself have seen him do, and I've seen what it's done to him." He shook his head. "You're the smartest man I know, Tony, but you're awfully blind sometimes."

Tony watched him walk out, too, slumping against the wall. "What the fuck?" he quietly asked the room, as if it would answer. The last look on Logan's face coupled with what Cap had just told him combined to make him wonder if he really was wrong about Logan. The man didn't exactly make out like he had hidden depths, what you saw was what you tended to get but for all Tony knew he kept a lot of dark things hidden, things he didn't share.

He shook himself and went downstairs a few floors where he could get his armor off easily, and he thanked God he didn't see Logan again.