Tony regretted his whole wish for havoc. Because of that damn wish he got four days of hell so intense that it was like Tony Stark didn't even exist. Iron Man fought, ate, slept (briefly!) and lived to take down the latest uprising of pure insane invading who-knows-whats that were all over the place like an infestation of Starbucks. Not that Tony had anything against Starbucks, really he didn't, but they were kind of everywhere.

By the time it was all mopped up and the city was on its way to another round of rebuilds and renovations, Tony had forgotten every damn thing Steve had gone over with him, and they had to take a whole day to relearn everything. But that was a good thing really, it gave them time to rest up and get over the fact that they'd spent the better part of three days being thrown through walls. Tony was still pissed off that they last thing they fought totalled his redesigned suit like it was paper. If anything showed up before he had a chance to get back into the shop he'd be reduced to wearing one of his old models.

And now he was standing in the gym, arms crossed and in one of his less amused moods, and giving his friend what he hoped was a look to strike fear into the hearts of all lesser men.

"You gotta be kidding me Steve. As in, you had better be kidding me."

"No, I'm not. Now stop being stubborn."

Tony almost ground his teeth. The last day before the function, and for some damn reason Steve had gotten it into his head that Tony needed to learn how to dance properly, because apparently that moving back and forth thing Tony did was not acceptable. Well, needless to say, Tony did not want to dance the waltz with the American golden boy as his partner.

Could there be anything quite as horrifying? No. The answer to that was without a doubt, a great big giant no. The worst part, the worst part, was that all Tony had to do was look at Steve to know that the other man had absolutely no problem with it, saw no problem with it. To Steve, it was just one more training exercise that needed to be completed. And didn't Tony just hate him for being so damn comfortable with the whole thing.

"Tony, I could get Natasha to come down if you would really prefer…"

"No!" Tony shuddered, the thought of instead dancing with the Black Widow giving him a whole new set of nightmares to brood on. "If Pep ever saw that I waltzed with Natasha, she'd probably rip the arc reactor out of my chest with a screwdriver and throw it out the window, with me still attached. If you're going to insist on this, I'm dancing with you, and nobody, I mean nobody is to know. Ever."

Steve nodded, smiling and confident and stupidly comfortable, while Tony wondered if making a run for it was still a viable option. This was going to be one hell of an exercise in mortification.

"Alright Tony, here, you hold your partner's hand like this, and put the other on their waist."

"Gee, we just started and already I feel like this was an even worse plan than I originally thought. Steve, can we just, not, do this? It is next to impossible to imagine that it's Pepper I'm holding when my vision is completely blocked by your wall-to-wall chest muscles."

"You have a better imagination than that, use it."

Tony bit back a retort, knowing that Steve was more stubborn than hell, and making things difficult would just make Steve lose patience. He wasn't going to get into a fight over something stupid like this. So he made the effort and did a wonderful, truly stellar job at keeping his comments to himself, at least until his foot was stepped on.

"Heyowow! You're supposed to be good at this since you're teaching me! Come on, where did you learn how to dance?"

"Sorry! I'm not used to doing the woman's steps." Steve blushed slightly, and looked somewhere above and to the right of Tony's head. "And Sharon taught me, she didn't like when we went out and never got to the dance floor. It wasn't hard, it isn't much different than gymnastics."

"Oh yeah? Don't give me that, I bet she gave you hell a few times," Tony said, grinning at Steve's embarrassment, "and I bet you knew better than to say no. She's not one to mess with, eh?"

Steve blushed darker, and Tony grinned wider. Now that he wasn't the only person uncomfortable, he felt a whole damn lot better. Doing the waltz was much more enjoyable when he could give Steve a good ribbing about Sharon, even if it did cause his toes to suffer some serious abuse.

It was almost six in the evening when they finished up, and Tony felt pretty optimistic as he clanked his beer bottle against Steve's with a laugh.

"Cheers to a dance lesson that barring the end of the world will never be repeated, and to Captain America, who can't waltz worth a star spangled damn."

Steve opened his mouth, most likely to once again defend himself with the whole never having to dance the girl's steps thing, when Tony's phone went off, chiming urgently against the table where he'd left it, Pepper's picture flashing on the ID screen. Tony hastily swallowed his mouthful of beer, reaching for the phone. Pepper was in a hotel across the city since the mansion was missing more windows than normal; she probably wanted him to bring her something she forgot to pack.

"Hey Pepper, hey, what's going on? Ready for our big night out tomorrow, right?"

He winced as Pepper's reply was pretty much an unintelligible shout, and tried to angle the phone to protect himself from possible hearing loss. "Whoa whoa, Pepper, what is going on? Yes I can take care of myself, yes I wrote it down. Yes, I- oh shit. Shit, shit. Pepper, give me ten minutes. Ten minutes? Okay? Okay. Yeah, bye."

Tony shut his phone, jumped to his feet and ran his hand through his hair all in one motion. She was never going to forgive him, he wrote the date down wrong, function was tonight and he was walking a fine line between being fashionable late and being straight up screwed for the night late.

He didn't stop to explain, he knew Steve would understand, probably heard most of the conversation anyway, and bolted up the stairs as fast as he could without falling flat. Tony didn't think that anything would prevent the rest of the evening from being excruciatingly long and painful in every way possible.

And the look on Pepper's face when he finally pulled up in front of her hotel sure as hell didn't do much to convince him otherwise.