Authors Note: I originally intended to keep this strictly comic book but, upon seeing the movie, I couldn't help but have that as his affliction instead. Please don't hate me, I deeply love the comic books and everything about them, but I wanted something more visual to be up with him. And I love the arc reactor. You could argue this chapter contains spoilers for the movie but it's nothing imdb wouldn't already have told you.
Chapter 10
As with all good things, Tony's two weeks in London came to an end but I wasn't half as upset about him leaving as I thought I'd be. It wasn't like I hadn't grown attached to him, swine and all as he could be, but when you've pretty much been living with someone for a week and a half you start to grow just a little bit fond of them. Ever since that day Tony had come in for "tea" after our little jaunt with Beans, he'd been a pretty permanent fixture in my humble abode. Even so, as empty as the flat was without him, I wasn't sad about him having to return to New York. Instead, to kill some time, I sprawled myself out on the bare floor and reminisced about our good times.
I lavished in the thoughts of the long, leisurely baths we'd shared, listened to distant echoes of the meaningful conversations about our childhoods and enveloped myself in the haze of the love we'd made. I'd leaf through the memories as though leafing through a photo album, embers of conversations or smells or sounds glowing somewhere deep within me until one of the embers grew into a fire and I could remember the whole thing. Like the tea day again, when I found out something about Tony which, I won't lie, had originally scared me a bit.
"AJ, my body might not look how you think it does under there." I'd been tugging at his shirt like an irritating puppy when he'd grabbed my wrists to give me the forewarning.
"Why? What's up with it?" I'd asked, suddenly feeling angry, thinking he was just saying it because things had got too real for him.
"I had...an accident a few years back. I was in Afghanistan, demonstrating my latest in death and destruction and... Oh my God, I can't believe I'm about to tell you this!" His tone changed for that part and he avoided my eyes. "I got captured. The people who were meant to be protecting me got killed and, in the course of me running away, I got blown up. As it were."
I could feel my face contorting into shapes of worry at his horror story.
"Anyway, there's shrapnel in my chest and, to stop it from piercing the vital bits of my heart, I fitted myself with a miniature arc reactor." At this point, he pulled off his shirt to reveal a circular plate embedded in his chest, glowing with neon blue light. Like a bemused child, I stared not really knowing what to think or say. "Don't look at it like that, it's shy." Tony jested. Still I gawped.
"Hey." Tony did that finger under the chin to make me look at him thing again. "It's keeping me alive. Isn't that the important thing?" He leant in and kissed me with so much tenderness and affection, my inhibitions about his arc thingamajig melted away. It obviously hadn't bothered me
that much anyway since he ended up in my bed moments later. And, I know what you're thinking; it had no effect whatsoever on his- how to put this- performance. Sorry for being crude.
Tony had stayed that night, and the night after that and then again the night after that and, it had to be said, they were some of the best night's sleep I'd ever had. Occasionally however, I'd wake up bleary eyed and stupid with sleep and he'd be gone but I'd put this down to the fact he had a huge, multinational company to run; nothing personal. Although I did occasionally wonder why he came back with flakes of ash in his hair, random flesh wounds and a smell of engine oil about his person.
Over the days Tony was living with me, my absolute terror about spending time in his company seemed to disintegrate into minor jitters. This could probably be accredited to the fact that I had to get used to it since, when I went to hide under my duvet hoping to subdue the butterflies, Tony was already under it. I did have some respite from him though, on the days that he had to go to work. As lonely as I sometimes got without his capacious male presence stinking up the place, I was very grateful of one particular day he'd gone to work; which delivers me nicely onto another memory.
Jake had phoned me the night before and had taken it upon himself to go into full blow freak out mode when Tony had answered the phone instead of me. A dead giveaway that, for reasons unbeknownst to Jake or probably not as the case may be, he was in my bed. I hadn't realised what was happening until I felt Tony's chest stir from beneath my head- a position I'd become very accustomed to sleeping in- and I'd heard his sleepy grizzly bear voice mumble "Hello?" but that was a whole other story. Anyway, Jake had gone totally nuts and I'd taken it upon myself, Good Samaritan that I was, to call and explain at a more sociable hour.
Despite being more interested in The Jeremy Kyle show than what he had so say, I consoled him with a series of "Yes Jake"s, "No Jake"s, "Three bags full Jake"s. While I watched some toothless women battle it out over their emaciated looking husband on the TV, Jake still burning up the line, I heard a knock at my door. Tony, my mind immediately assumed, my heart doing a little flip.
"Look Jake, I have to go. Speak soon." As cruel as it was, I suddenly found myself even less interested in what he had to say than before and hung up regardless of still being able to hear his frantic voice yapping in the earpiece. I bounded to the door, Beans giving me a strange look before realising why I was so excited and sloping off. He couldn't quite get accustomed to the fact he was no longer the only man in my life, or rather perhaps that someone kept sleeping on his side of the bed. I flung the door wide, grinning like a looper. Much to my embarrassment, the man who stood before me was not Tony, rather the old gentleman who drove the limousine the night of our first date.
"Compliments of Mr Stark, Ma'am." The man intoned in his still very British accent, handing me a small black box tied together with plum coloured ribbon.
"Thank you..." I waited for him to give his name but when he didn't, I just nodded graciously, accepting the box.
"That's quite alright Miss." The man gave a small, knowing smile before turning to leave. Bubbling with excitement over Tony's gift, I kicked the door shut and, making an obscure squealing sound, ran back inside with the present. Holding the box as delicately as you would a baby; I carefully undid the bow and lifted the lid. Sat inside, on a bed of matching plum tissue paper was what appeared to be a rose made from crudely welded iron. When I took it in my hand, the centre started to glow with the same blue light as Tony's heart. A warm smile spread across my face and then I noticed a note sat in the recess where the rose had been. Cautiously, not knowing what to expect, I unfolded it and took a moment to look over the letter. I'd never seen Tony' handwriting before so it was something of a novelty for me, all loops and curls. I read the note, embracing each word as I enunciated it.
'AJ, got bored down in shop today and made you this. When you touch it, it lights up (as you've probably already gathered). I guess what I'm trying to say with my shoddy attempt at sentimentality is that, when you touched my life, it lit up and I don't want that feeling to ever go away. I leave here in a few days .It's for this reason that I think the content of the envelope speaks for itself. All my love, Tony."
Sure enough, an envelope sat where the letter previously had. Fighting the urge to savage it, I carefully lifted the seal, being careful not to tear what was inside. Delving my fingers in, I pulled out something I could never have imagined. A plane ticket, to New York, one way.
"Two questions." Tony's voice made me jump as it floated over from the door way. I looked at him, tears welling up in my eyes. Slowly, he ambled over and, squatting down in front of me, asked gently. "One, will you take me up on my offer?" He gestured to the ticket in my trembling hands. "And two, will you do me the enormous honour of allowing me to call you my girlfriend." The tears over flowed.
"Yeah, of course I will." I croaked. "But on one condition...Beans comes too." We both erupted into fits of breathy laughter.
So that's the story of how this came to be; me, laying on the bare floor of my flat amidst suitcases and holdalls, killing time, waiting for my flight to New York.
To a life with Tony Stark.