Thanks, as always, to my beta bequirk.
So, this is a parody, okay? It's very loosely inspired by 50 Shades of Grey and the tradition of terrible self-insert fanfiction from which it was spawned. Any resemblance this POS bears to any other story in this or any fandom is purely coincidental.
Warnings: intentionally bad writing, Mary Sue-age (Sewage?), OOC, tropes.
Attempting (and failing) to stifle an irritated sigh, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked the time.
It was now 3:59 PM. Exactly 2 minutes had passed since I had last looked at the time, and 59 minutes had passed since my scheduled meeting with Tony Stark was due to start.
Yes, THE Tony Stark. Billionaire, genius, member of a team of world-saving superheroes.
I was supposed to be doing an interview with him for the school paper. This situation was rather unexpected, as I don't work at the school paper. I actually have no journalism background whatsoever; I'm a biology major. But one of my friends is the editor in chief of the paper, and she was supposed to do this interview herself. Except she got sick, and instead of asking any of the other journalists at her beck and call to cover for her, she asked me.
Weird, right?
Almost as weird as the fact that Tony Stark agreed to give an interview to a shitty college paper.
Anyway.
So, I showed up at Stark Tower at 2:45 PM, since it seemed prudent to be early. The guy at the front desk directed me to a conference room on the 36th floor, and after I inevitably got lost (and was redirected by a freaking talking computer or something), I made it there with five minutes to spare.
And then I'd waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
Which brings us to the present.
After what felt like 20 more minutes had passed, I pulled my phone out again, wondering briefly why I had bothered to jam it back into my pocket. I'm kind of an impatient asshole; I should have known I'd just be checking the time again.
I also pulled out a compact mirror (from where? who knows), because it suddenly occurred to me that it was of the utmost importance that I check my appearance, despite the fact there was really no reason to do so. I've looked more or less the same since I was sixteen years old, so it's not like it's particularly variable. Still, I felt suddenly compelled to take a look and then ruminate on it unnecessarily. So, I looked at my reflection and saw short red hair, blue eyes (that totally change to gray when I'm angry), glasses, and freckles. Tilting my head up, I saw that underneath my chin, there was a scar from an unfortunate childhood incident that I will allude to but not explain. Oh, and my left front tooth is chipped from a separate unfortunate childhood incident.
Yep, exactly the same as always.
Once I'd ascertained that, I looked at the time.
It was now 4:01 PM. So, not 20 minutes, just 2. Still, I'd been waiting for an hour.
I sighed. I had probably been stood up.
This did not especially surprise me, since I had been incredulous about the whole interview thing to begin with. Tony Stark was a busy man and should have really had better things to do. I was still aggravated, though, so when I gathered up my crap and stormed out of the conference room, I closed the door behind me with what was probably (though not definitively) excessive force and stomped down the hallway.
I ignored the talking computer chiding me for slamming a door.
When the elevator opened in front of me, it already held one other occupant. He was kind of short (as if I had any room to talk, at my stunning height of 5 feet, 2 inches), middle aged, wearing a lab coat, and he had the softest, fluffiest, most perfect hair I'd ever seen in my life. He was also holding a tablet that he was regarding with a kind of half-exasperated, half-puzzled expression that I found immediately relatable: it was the exact same face I make whenever one of my cats does something particularly destructive and I have no idea how or why.
The comparison made me smile. As I stepped into the elevator, the other occupant looked up. "Hi, I'm Bruce," he said distractedly. It struck me as strange—who just introduces themselves to random strangers on the elevator?
Well, maybe extroverts? But this guy didn't strike me as an extrovert. With his glasses, adorably rumpled hair, and lab coat, he basically screamed "nerdy scientist." And everyone knows that ALL nerdy scientists are introverts. It's like one of the incontrovertible laws of the universe.
I replied, "Hi." Then, because I couldn't help but be polite, "I'm Al."
"Nice to meet you," Bruce said. After a beat, he added, "I'm also the Hulk."
"Ah," I replied. I was calm on the outside, but on the inside...I was also calm. Freaking out isn't really in my nature.
And to be honest, I was trying to figure out why the hell he was telling me this.
"I'm telling you this to save a couple hundred words of exposition," he said, as if reading my mind.
I narrowed my eyes. "What?"
Bruce sighed. "Nothing."
Huh. "So...Hulk, hey? That's kind of cool."
"Not really," Bruce replied, looking suddenly dejected. "It's pretty much the source of all the conflict and angst in my life." He sighed again, looking down at his shoes, shaking his artfully rumpled hair into his eyes.
This conversation was just bizarre. "O...kay."
"So I guess you're here for the usual sort of thing," Bruce mused, apparently recovered from his...moment.
"I'm sorry?" What was 'the usual sort of thing?'
"Nothing," he said again. "I haven't seen you around here before, what's your story?"
I considered pointing out that there had to be several hundred, if not several thousand, people in this building daily and that there was no way he'd seen them all. I did not. Instead, I replied, "I was supposed to interview Mr. Stark for my college paper, but I think he forgot he was meeting with me."
Bruce nodded. "He's kind of busy right now; he blew up lab 7 around 2:30, and he's been trying to explain to Pepper—er, the CEO—what he was doing that led to that outcome." He paused. "I was just looking over his work, and I have to admit, I'm stymied; he wasn't doing anything that should have resulted in an explosion." He shrugged. "Whatever. Probably just a terrible plot device."
"Ah," I said again, partly because I had no idea what he was talking about and partly to fill the silence. It seemed to me that the elevator ride down to the ground floor was taking markedly longer than the ride up had. Indeed, it was; I hadn't pressed a button, and the pair of us had just been awkwardly standing in an unmoving elevator for several minutes. "Um. Is this your floor, or...?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah, I guess it is," Bruce replied. I found it hard to believe that anyone could actually be absentminded enough that they'd fail to notice they were on their floor.
Of course, I'd failed to notice that the elevator wasn't moving. More and more, it seemed like my day was devolving into a series of tropes. At least I hadn't developed random magical powers yet.
Trying to get my life back on track (as if it ever had been), I reached over and pressed the "door open" button. "Okay, it was nice meeting you, Bruce," I said.
"You know," he said, stepping into the elevator door so that it emanated a continuous high-pitched 'beep.' "You could just come up and meet everybody." He paused, then added factually, "We all live here together as a happy team, despite being adults and barely actually knowing each other outside of saving the world. Also despite the fact it's no longer canon compliant."
"Uh," I said intelligently. One, that had made literally no sense. What the hell was 'canon compliant?' Second, meeting The Avengers had definitely not been on the agenda for today; if it had been, I would have worn more comfortable shoes. Third, why was this guy inviting someone he'd just met in an elevator to meet his superhero friends?
Bruce said, "Look, I know it's weird, but it'll move the plot of this piece of crap along. Just go with it, okay?"
"What?"
"Nothing. You should just come up."
"Fine," I agreed, trying to figure out what he'd said before. I hadn't really been able to hear him over the elevator's alarm. "That beeping is getting really annoying."
"What she said," came another voice, from...above me.
"Clint," Bruce sighed, shaking his perfectly tousled curls. "Get down from there."
"Caw, caw," said the voice agreeably. Then, the access panel at the top of the elevator car popped open and a man hopped down. He had short dark blonde hair, and for some reason, he was wearing a sleeveless shirt despite it being midwinter and maybe 30 degrees out. I didn't mind, though, as his biceps were the stuff of legend. He stuck out his hand. "Clint Barton."
What was with all the people introducing themselves?
"Al," I replied, shaking his hand.
"I know," he said easily. "I was listening to your conversation with Dr. Banner here. So, you're coming up to meet everyone, right?"
To be honest, at this point I was mostly convinced that I had fallen on some stairs and maybe hit my head on my way into the building. I do tend to fall down a lot. So I shrugged. "Why the hell not?"
He clapped me on the back. "Great!"
Bruce got back on the elevator, and Clint pressed the button for the 99th floor. When it prompted him for a password, he furtively glanced over at me before tapping in, "ASSEMBLE."
I filed that away for future reference.
The ride up was pretty nauseating; I hate elevators due to an unfortunate adulthood incident that I will allude to but not explain. Still, we arrived on the 99th floor unscathed (meaning I hadn't thrown up on either of my escorts), and when the doors opened, I was met with a truly unusual sight.
Just outside of the elevator was a living area, with several couches and a large television. Captain America was sitting on a couch next to the Black Widow. He was wearing a blue hoodie with a United States flag on the front, and his hair was very patriotic. Black Widow was wearing a black t-shirt that said "I 'heart' Hawkeye," and her hair was less patriotic but still very perfect. The two of them were playing Mario Kart while Thor sat on a separate couch eating a box of pop-tarts. His hair was tied back in some sort of complicated braid thing that I didn't think I could ever do, even if my hair was long enough. Which it isn't, as I'd seen in my mirror earlier.
"Thor shouldn't even be here," Bruce confided to me, tilting his head and causing his luscious curly brown hair to sway. "It's not canon compliant."
There was that phrase again.
"I'm not sure how, but you're cheating!" Captain America yelled, shaking his controller in a distinctly grampa-like way. "Darn this technology!"
"I'm not cheating," Black Widow replied, bored. "You're just terrible. It's like you're actually 90 years old or something." She turned around. "Hey, Clint, Bruce. Who's the kid?"
'Kid' seemed awfully rich coming from her—she was, what? Like two years older than me? If that? I frowned. "I'm Al. I was supposed to interview Mr. Stark for my school newspaper, but he didn't show up. I ran into Bruce in the elevator and he invited me up here...I'm not sure why."
Black Widow nodded, apparently accepting this as normal. Hell, maybe it was. "Okay," she said. "Well, I'm Natasha." She pointed at Captain America. "This is Steve. Thor, you probably know. Tony's busy getting chewed out by Pepper, but he should be here soon for Team Movie Night."
"Team Movie Night?" I repeated, making an attempt to raise an eyebrow. It's an expression I've never been able to manage, and I ended up looking constipated.
"Yeah," Bruce said. "Every Friday, we all watch a movie together. This is usually done under the pretense of increasing Steve and or Thor's pop culture knowledge, but it's basically an excuse for lazy authors to write bad fluff." He looked at me critically. "Like you're probably going to do."
I again had no idea what he was talking about, but I took vague offense anyway.
No one else seemed to notice Bruce talking nonsense, or if they did, they just ignored it. Steve grinned at me. "Tonight's movie is Star Wars. There are aliens in it!"
His enthusiasm was adorable. I had to crush it. "That's three movies," I pointed out. "Or six, depending."
Steve frowned.
Bruce nudged me. "Don't be mean to Steve. And don't overthink this, it's not really relevant to the plot."
Yeah, I must have whacked my head on the stairs really hard when I fell. What the hell was he talking about? Was it worth it trying to figure it out? Probably not. "Whatever. Fine."
"You're welcome to stay," Steve said.
"Sure," I agreed. Might as well see this hallucination or whatever through to the end, right?
"Want to play Mario Kart?" Natasha asked. "You can't possibly be worse than Grandpa Rogers over here."
Well, it just so happens that I am a Mario Kart champion. "I'd love to," I said.
I walked over to the couch, and Steve handed me his controller, as he got up, offering me his place on the couch before heading towards a door. Thor handed me a pop tart; he hadn't actually stopped eating long enough to engage in conversation, just shoveling one pastry into his face after another.
I noticed that Clint hadn't said anything for a while, so I looked around for him before I sat down. He was, as far as I could tell, gone. Not surprising, really; a man who hangs out on the top of an elevator probably doesn't like socializing very much, after all.
Natasha was a very good Mario Kart player, but I was able to beat her in every race despite her superior reflexes and overall intelligence. Bruce kept coughing as he watched us, and it sounded like he was saying something when he did it. 'Mary Sue' or something, I don't even know.
His hair looked great while he was doing it, though, so I didn't think too much about it. Eventually, he got bored and wandered off, leaving me and Natasha. And Thor, of course. There was a rustle from above our heads as Bruce left the room, and I looked up to see Clint perched on one of the exposed rafters of the room, watching Bruce's progress from the room intently. He didn't say anything, though, and then I had to look back at the game to keep from getting hit with a banana.
Next thing I knew, it was getting dark out, and suddenly, it was time for the movie! It didn't seem like enough time had passed for this to be the case, but hey, this was a hallucination, right? No questions.
Clint appeared first, plopping down on the couch between me and Natasha. He offered me some popcorn. He must've gotten down from the rafters at some point, although I hadn't noticed.
Then Bruce came in, escorting Tony Stark.
"Hey," Tony greeted me. "Sorry about missing our meeting. I got tied up with something." He offered me his hand. "Tony Stark. I see you've met the rest of the team."
"Yeah," I said, shaking his hand. "Bruce invited me up here."
Tony nodded. "He does that a lot. Usually muttering stuff about 'bad writers' and 'stupid plots' and 'shallow characters.' I don't know what he's going on about half the time, to be honest, it's like his head is in a different world. And his hair is always perfect, it's so annoying."
I was happy to learn that I wasn't the only one who couldn't figure out what Bruce was talking about most of the time. "I see."
"So, we can reschedule the interview if you want."
To be honest, I didn't give a shit about the interview, but I thought my friend the Editor in Chief might get annoyed if I didn't come back with anything. "Sure. When's convenient for you?"
Tony waved a vague hand. "Whenever. Set something up with JARVIS on your way out."
"With whom?" I asked.
Bruce plopped down in an armchair, bouncing his perfect chocolate curls. He muttered, "No one in the real world uses 'whom,' that's so pretentious." Louder, he added, "JARVIS is the talking computer you referenced earlier, a few pages ago."
"...Uh, okay."
Tony waved him off.
Next, Steve came back, and he handed each Avenger (and me!) a red, white, and blue popsicle. "They're patriotic," he said, smiling fondly. "Like me."
Thor had never left, had, in fact, just been shoving pop tarts in his face from a seemingly infinite box, so without further ado, Tony started the movie.
I haven't seen any of the Star Wars movies in a decade or so, and didn't really like them that much then, so I'm not going to bother describing whichever one we watched.
At the end of the movie, everyone had fallen asleep on everyone else, and there was a lot of cuddling and such going on. "Awww," I said, looking around me.
Bruce raised his head from where it was laying on Steve's shoulder. His beautiful chestnut ringlets were smooshed elegantly against the side of his head, and he rolled his eyes. "Yeah, like this crap is realistic, ugh." Then he glared at me. "Your descriptions of my hair are absurd. Bordering on offensive."
Steve sat up. "Well, you do have nice hair."
Bruce grumbled, "My hair isn't canon compliant."
"Caw, caw," Clint added sleepily.
Thor straightened, uncurling himself from around Natasha. Pop tart crumbs cascaded down his front. "I REQUIRE SUSTENANCE!" he bellowed, then he put another pop tart in his mouth. Natasha elbowed him in the stomach, apparently annoyed that she had been woken up.
"That was a great movie," Steve said enthusiastically. He sucked his popsicle in an uncomfortably erotic manner.
...Why hadn't it melted completely yet? It had been like two hours since he pulled that thing out of the freezer.
You know what? I don't even know what I'm doing anymore.
"I should probably get going," I said, standing. "Thanks for inviting me to movie night. We should do this again sometime."
"For sure," Tony agreed, standing and ushering me to the elevator. "Don't forget to talk to JARVIS on your way out. Have a good night!"
As I got onto the elevator, I heard Clint ask, "So, are we gonna do the post-movie orgy thing?"
"No point," Bruce said. "The story's over, the narrator just left."
"Awww, that sucks," Clint said. "Well, maybe next time?"
"Wouldn't count on it," Bruce replied. "I'm getting a distinct gen-only vibe from that one."
With that, the elevator closed.
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this masterpiece!