Genius, Billionaire, Playboy
Just when Tony thinks he's going to have to resort to improvised food construction to alleviate his boredom, a pretty woman walks up that catches his attention.
Pairing: Hermione/Tony
Rating: teen
Warnings: implied adultery
Tropes: fake dating, Pre-Iron Man
Words: 1,040
Original Release Date: 26 Oct 2018
Additional Notes: Written for Marvelously Magical Fanfiction's October Roll-a-Drabble.
Prompt: Tony Stark, Hermione Granger, fake dating
Tony was bored. He was attending some gala for some random charity while he was here in London and somehow, nobody seemed to recognize him. Which wasn't bad, per say, but it was strange to not be at least somebody's center of attention. So he was standing at the buffet table, snacking and vacillating between wanting to eavesdrop on nearby conversations or see what he could build from the wide array of food products on the table.
A pretty woman with wild hair looking extremely stressed out approached the bar near where he was standing. "Fire whiskey, please," she told the bartender. The man behind the bar fixed it and though Tony didn't see him pull out a lighter when he slid it across the bartop to the woman it was on fire. Instead of blowing the fire out like any sensible person, she tipped it up and drank it down like a shot, setting the tumbler on the bartop with a heavy clink when she was done.
Intrigued, Tony sidled up beside her. Any woman who could drink her liquor like that was someone worth talking to. "Do you always shoot your whiskey?" he asked.
She startled slightly before turning to look at him. He watched her eyes appraise him, following the lines of the designer suit he wore and then back up to his face. He gave her his signature smirk and wink.
She shrugged and then nodded. "You'll do." She reached forward and hooked her arm around his, turning him back out towards the room.
His eyebrows rose up his forehead as confusion colored his expression. "I'll do?"
"Yes," she said in a no-nonsense, clipped tone. She seemed to be speaking out of the corner of her mouth. "We're dating."
"How long have we been dating?" he asked, tipping his head back. He could help out a pretty woman.
"A month."
"Two."
She turned to look at him and blinked, "What?"
"The invitations to something like this would have gone out at least six weeks in advance. You wouldn't have brought just anybody. Two months, at the least."
"Fine, two months," she agreed, facing forward again.
They started meandering between small groups of people and the dance floor and Tony asked her another question. "Where'd we meet?"
"Uh, at a bar."
"Too cliché. Class it up, do you really think you'd find someone like me in a bar? We met last October, at a masquerade. We ran into each other two months ago at a meeting."
"Really? That's your 'how we met' story?"
"It was a boring meeting. After some heavy innuendo, we slipped out and had sex in the elevator. Just couldn't get enough of one another after that." She snorted to stifle a giggle and he turned to look at her. "What?"
"That's ridiculous. No one who knows me would believe that."
He smiled. "Does anyone who knows you think you'd enlist a handsome, wealthy stranger as a fake boyfriend?"
She paused, thinking, before shaking her head.
"Then maybe they don't know you very well, hmm?" He was about to say something else when someone called out.
"Granger!"
She stiffened and her eyes went wide for a second before she plastered a fake smile on her lips and turned to the pale blond interloper. He was tall and thin and the woman on his arm was elegant in that cookie-cutter way well-to-do debutantes tended to be. "It's good to see you, Granger. Glad you could make it. I didn't know how you'd fare after that messy breakup that's been all over the papers."
"I'm just fine, Draco," she said stiffly. "I'm great, actually. I don't think you've met my boyfriend yet—"
"Tony Stark," he said over her, offering his hand to the man.
"Draco Malfoy," the man answered smugly, returning the handshake without an ounce of recognition. "Have you met Daphne Greengrass?" he asked about the woman beside him, and though the question was nominally for Tony, Malfoy had returned his attention to Granger.
She said in a voice he was sure could freeze glass, "We've met. If you'll excuse us, Tony and I were on our way to talk to Minister Shacklebolt." She turned and directed their steps away from the power couple.
"It might help if I knew your name, next time," Tony suggested as they converged on a tall, black man in a vibrant purple suit.
"Hermione!" the man called loudly at their approach, and she left Tony's arm to hug him. He kissed both of her cheeks before stepping back. "You're not letting the press get to you, are you?" He gave a cursory glance in Tony's direction. "I see you've got your own sort of revenge, huh?"
"Tony's not revenge, Kingsley. He just came back into my life at the right moment is all. Besides, I don't need it. The Greengrass bint can play musical eligible bachelors every week for all I care."
Kingsley looked back at Tony and his brow furrowed. Tony smiled and introduced himself again.
"Stark?" he asked, then looked back at Hermione, "Talk about eligible bachelors."
She looked at Tony and there was a question in her eyes but he just grinned at her. She and Kingsley exchanged a few more words and shortly thereafter, Hermione was leading them into what looked like a cloakroom.
She sighed and dropped his arm, turning on him to ask, "All right, so who are you?"
"Tony Stark? Genius, billionaire, playboy? Owner of Stark Industries? Any of this ringing a bell?"
Her shoulders slumped in something like disappointment. "Of all the men, in all the world..."
He shrugged, "What can I say? You've got great taste."
She rolled her eyes at him. "What are you doing at a charity event for St Mungo's?"
He took a step closer to her and brought his hand up to the small of her back. "Being your date. Now come here, to really sell this, we're going to have to look like we've been making out."
"What?" she asked, though she didn't step back out of his embrace.
"We snuck off to the coat closet, what else would we be doing?" He grinned and leaned down to kiss her thoroughly. She kissed him back.
