A/N: So apparently I get really bloodthirsty when I'm sleepy…
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Tony Stark loved working with criminals.
He loved it like a fifth son when all you want is a daughter. But there you are in the hospital and he's there and breathing and your four other kids are there and your wife's all, "Never again," and you're all, "But honey buns…" – because how is it your fault the girl ones don't swim as fast? And maybe you want to be the scary in-law for a change, and…
Tony needed to trim his analogies.
But as he stared down the barrel of a weapon that he recognised personally, insides still gleaming with polish and smelling like Stark Industries lube (for guns, calm down), he was pretty sure he had the upper hand on literature. Tony felt like he should send an email around, maybe write it across the sky, to let the goons of the world know that, after the first hundred goes, irony was no longer the highest form of wit. It was suicidally boring.
"You don't have the money," he concluded.
At his shoulder, Happy stood tense and still, holding a damp umbrella in one gloved fist like a baseball bat.
"It's a tough economy," replied – Mickey? Nicky? Ricky? – the idiot with the gun.
His gun, Tony reminded himself. Just because he swapped them for cash and favours did not mean they stopped being his. And… he decided immediately to revisit that last analogy, because wow he'd make a terrible parent.
"In light of which," the idiot continued, "I was hoping we could talk about a new settlement."
Happy snorted. Tony sighed.
The gun looked liked a standard issue FBI Glock 22, steel guts, plastic skin, which Tony wouldn't ordinarily have been able to lay eyes on without breaking into hives. But in fact, it was a two hundred thousand dollar ballistic clone of a specific FBI Glock belonging to a specific FBI detective who had rumbled the Calabreses on a narcotics deal five weeks ago. Counting the 'domestic use', 'law enforcement' and 'likely to end up in evidence' premiums, and subtracting the customer loyalty discount, Tony felt he had been more than generous asking for a mere half million.
Reaching into his suit pocket, and ignoring the wave of alarm and drawn pistols, he pulled out his phone.
"For your daddy's sake," he began thinly, not looking up as his fingers danced across the screen one-handed. "How about… you either pay me or fuck off?"
"How about ten grand," Mickey countered, "or I put a bullet through your head."
He smirked. One by one across the room, his buddies echoed the expression, leaning against the walls with their folded arms bulging inside suit sleeves. As if they'd all watched the same bad gangster movie and thought, 'You see him? The one in the background with no lines and visible daddy issues? I wanna be that guy.'
Ugh.
Tony didn't even have the strength to roll his eyes.
Mickey Mouse was not going to shoot him. He was not going to lay a finger on Tony because if he did, the Calabreses would be fighting their drug wars with stakes and pitchforks while Jarvis posted missiles to the other side. Because the Starks had been arming New York since before Al Capone's grandmother left Sicily, and if they or their supply chain was threatened, then Pepper had the names and numbers of every player in the city who would happily ring bark the Calabrese family tree and then feed it through a wood chipper.
But Tony didn't say any of this aloud. As much as he loved the sound of his own voice, he was not in the habit of stating the obvious. There was a reason he turned down that MIT tenure.
Instead, he summoned a red, PRESS ME button on his phone and held his thumb down. Then, staring up from under lids heavy with disappointment, he enunciated in a clear, flat voice –
"Blow me."
The was a flash of surprise. But before Mickey and his friends could do anything more than sneer, Tony reached over to snag the umbrella from Happy and dragged him to the floor behind it.
As the canopy burst open on the confused faces around them, a single, soft sound seeped through the room.
Beep…
A block away, two teenagers hidden in a church basement were floating like clouds on a cloudy day when the explosion clapped like thunder in their ears.
They jerked.
Blinked at each other. Then stared at the door.
Finally, looked back at each other and then didn't stop laughing until the cleaner came in and beat them out with a mop.
Mickey Calabrese, third and least promising son of the late, great, Dino Calabrese, lay flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling with his mouth agape.
"Uuuuurrrrghhhhh…" he said.
His arms were splayed out, one up, one down like a cartoon Egyptian. Meanwhile, most of his right hand (the fingers and fleshy parts of the palm) lay scattered around him in a twelve foot radius of pink shrapnel from which Tony had been saved by his umbrella. The one outlying thumb had torn off at the knuckle and flown backwards past him, catching him with a red smudge on the cheek, before hitting the wall. His index finger had stayed heroically with the frame of Tony's gun, still curled behind the trigger guard and leaking thinly from the root along a dangling string of ligament. And finally, just right of centre, buried an inch deep between his ribs, was the short, slender barrel. It formed a spout from which a weak, foamy, cherry red fountain bubbled up to spill over his chest and onto the white carpet. Its coppery tang mingled with the smell of hot steel and burnt plastic to hang bitter and metallic in the air.
As the ringing stopped, Tony lowered the umbrella. Happy took one look at the scene, snapped his hanging jaw closed, saw Tony's less-than-surprised expression and glared at him in a long-suffering mix of disbelief and so help me god, I will punch you to the ground.
The goons stood wide-eyed and frozen.
Polka dotting the carpet in red, Tony threw the umbrella aside. Seven pairs of eyes snapped up at him. Guns were thrown down in a succession of dull clanks and hands reached for the sky. Without the benefit of an umbrella, they looked like five year-olds after spaghetti bolognaise. Terrified, terrified five year-olds and very red, very thin bolognaise.
"So," Tony rubbed his hands together, his salesman smile plastered back on his face. "Tell your boss I can have another one ready by next week, but… expenses, my umbrella, my time, your stupidity… call it seven hundred and fifty, all up. Cash on delivery. Oh, and Happy, could you…"
He gestured vaguely to the gun parts scattered around them – a firing pin here, a spring there, the slide at the their feet – and more specifically at the hardware sticking out of its mafioso pin cushion. Happy threw another dirty glare in his direction, to which Tony grinned blithely, and took a reluctant step towards Mickey.
"No, wait!"
The entire room got whiplash turning towards the voice. Happy (finally) got out his pistol.
Framed in the door, hunched over and panting, was a slight, frail-looking man with rumpled brown hair, streaked with grey, and nervous brown eyes behind wire frame glasses. In his sneakers, brown slacks and wrinkly shirt, which could have been purple some hundred washes ago, he might as well have walked in off the street for all the likelihood of him being part of the Calabrese crew.
"Wait," he repeated, raising his hands for Happy, but then looking straight past him to address Tony directly. There were shadows under his eyes and his skin was tired and wan, but his gaze held. "If you pull that out, he'll die. Let me help him first."
Tony stared for a moment, just absorbing the data, before picking one of the uncredited extras around the room to ask, "Is he with you?"
The man started, hands twitching up an inch, and then nodded hesitantly. No doubt he didn't want to be associated until he knew whether Tony was likely to have him shot.
"I'm a doctor. I took care of Dino," he explained. Tony didn't miss the casual use of old Calabrese's first name, nor the fact that this told him nothing about his identity. "Look… I know the score, Mister Stark. No hospitals. No cops. Just let me help him and I'll bring your property back to you. I promise."
Tony shrugged. Holding up his phone under the guise of checking his hair in the reflection, he snapped a picture or twelve of Doc.
"Why do I care if he dies?" he asked.
Something like amusement, or maybe just a trick of the light, flickered over the doctor's anaemic features.
"You don't. But his brothers will. A murder investigation means nothing to you, but if word gets out to the press…" he replied, "it might be awkward at the D.A.'s Anti-Corruption Fundraiser that you're hosting. It's this Saturday, isn't it?"
The room froze for a second time to watch with baited breath as the threat drifted delicately to land at Tony's feet.
Tony stared. He was… fascinated.
Utterly amazed by this skinny, short-sighted, poorly dressed civilian just throwing cold threats at his arms dealer self in that calm, tired voice like he wasn't losing life span with every word.
The doctor adjusted his glasses, and then smiled thinly. With a hand on Happy's elbow, Tony coaxed the gun down.
"Okay, Doctor," he grinned. He couldn't have kept from grinning if he tried. "He's all yours."
The man nodded, then wasted no time striding past his gaping colleagues to crouch by Mickey's side. His hands were already wet with blood when Tony's business card landed beside him. The address of a private hospital was scribbled on the back.
"Send him there," Tony instructed. "They won't ask questions and we'll cover the costs."
The doctor looked up, surprised. "Thank you."
"Oh, this isn't for free," Tony explained as he slipped on his sunglasses. "Six p.m., tomorrow, my place. Bring a friend and I shoot. Forget my stuff and I shoot. Leave a single piece behind and… et cetera."
The doctor nodded once. With Happy in tow, Tony all but skipped out of the room.
And maybe there were some perks to working with criminals, after all. You got to meet the most interesting people.
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