Eva was having an uncharacteristically great time. She was alone in her verdant little apartment, still in her pajamas, cooking pancakes and singing along to Tchaikovsky. It didn't even matter that his Serenade for Strings didn't have any lyrics to sing along to, so happy was she.
She was just setting a saucer of milk down for Rachel Carson when her phone rang. Eva frowned as she saw Stark's number flash up on the screen, and reluctantly picked it up.
"What do you want?" she asked him.
"What's your apartment number?"
"Uhh, 300 and West 86th –"
"Not the block, the apartment."
"705."
"Gotcha."
The doorbell rang. Eva switched her speaker off and went to open it.
Stark was stood outside, phone still at his ear and sunglasses on even though he was inside. "How do you afford this place?" he asked her. "Aren't you an indebted student?"
"My parents halved the rent with me until I graduated," she said, hanging up on him. "Then Vision helped me out. Now I can just about afford it with the gardening jobs since they froze the rent when I moved in. Why are you here?"
He handed her a hologram tablet, which she tapped. A 3D image fizzed into life above it of the Avengers HQ grounds.
"In your professional opinion," Stark said, "where's the best place to put an ornamental pond?"
"Everyone else you know was busy, huh?"
"Rhodey's at a thing in DC. Pepper's in California. Happy's annoying me and FRIDAY's being presumptuous. I thought I might check in," he said.
"We aren't friends, Tony," Eva told him, poking a finger at his chest.
"Can a lion befriend a burrowing owl?" he scoffed.
"Whatever. Do you want pancakes?"
"Please."
"Come in, then. And don't call me a burrowing owl."
"Your cat is nicer to me than you are," he told her a few minutes later, as she dumped two plates piled with an ungodly amount of pancakes on her coffee table and sat down on the floor opposite him. Stark was leaning over to her armchair, which Rachel Carson was curled up on and purring as he scratched her behind the ears. "Shouldn't you be worried about that?"
"No," Eva replied, now putting honey and butter down. "How's Pepper?"
"Effervescent," Stark replied, and Eva raised her eyebrows at him as she started shovelling her late breakfast into her mouth. "Light of my life." He said it lightly, but she knew that there was truth behind it. "How come you have no furniture?"
"I have furniture!" she said defensively. "I have that armchair, and this table, and a bed, and a wardrobe, and a towel rack, and…" she ran out of things to list, and covered it up by taking another mouthful. "Besides," she added, putting a hand over her mouth. "More furniture means less room for plants."
Stark tore up a pancake with his fingers, dipped it in the honey pot, and dropped it into his mouth. "Your priorities are terrible."
"Says the man whose fiancée broke up once with him because he built too many tin can suits."
"Touché. Maybe if you didn't deal so many below-the-belt blows you might have more than two friends, Kresk."
She scowled. "Change the subject."
"Fine. I bought Bryant Park the other week."
"Ooh, really? I love that place." It was a little patch of green just down the street from the old Avengers Tower. Why, though? I thought you didn't own the Tower anymore."
"I don't," Stark replied, now rolling up another pancake into a sausage shape and taking a bite out of it. "But there's an adjacent building that comes with it which is very convenient for keeping an eye on nearby skyscrapers. I like keeping an eye on my creations. Speaking of –Vision's delayed on an op right now. It's why he hasn't been around in a while. Thought you might want to know."
"Huh?"
Tony paused with a pancake halfway to his mouth. "What?" he asked. "You already knew?"
He doesn't know, Eva thought. He doesn't know Vision's with Wanda.
"No," she said quickly, making a mental note to bring this up during their next phone call. "No, I didn't. I was worried. Thanks for letting me know." She scrambled for something, anything to change the subject to before she gave the game away. "I, uh... I saw the stuff about Rhodey's exoskeleton on the news the other day," she said, cutting herself another slice. "He's fully able now, right?"
"He wants everyone to think that he is," Tony said. "He still can't run up stairs fast without tripping up. Oh, my God. The security footage of that is hilarious."
"You're such a dick," Eva grinned.
"Takes one to know one." He clinked his glass of OJ against hers. "Is this from concentrate?"
"No idea. Hey, you know that joke from Always Sunny about them seeing juice and saying –"
"That they'd never drunk straight mixer before? Struck a little close to home for both of us, I can imagine. How's the sobriety going?"
"It's… going," she said. "Definitely going. You?"
"Would you like to hear about the miraculous cleansing properties of rhubarb smoothies?"
"God, no."
"Right answer. You watch Sunny?"
"Yeah. You watch Sunny? You always reminded me of…"
They talked solidly for about three hours, by the end of which both of them had cried laughing at least once and Rachel Carson had given up trying to sleep and gone for a walk out onto the fire escape. Anyone watching would have thought they were friends, or something.
And, a week later, some very tired-looking delivery men knocked on Eva's door to tell her she had a lot of packages. Behind them, filling up the corridor of the seventh floor, was so much fancy-looking furniture that it barely fitted into her tiny apartment. It came with a note.
Even burrowing owls need a couch, it said.
A/N siriuslocked's SPOILER-FREE review of Infinity War: amazing. It's clever and funny and manages to sustain a pace that should be impossible to maintain, let alone pull of so exhileratingly well. But - most amazingly - it achieved this high-stakes gravitas right from the off that no other Marvel movie has ever come close to. It doesn't pull punches at all. It's game changing; not just for the MCU, but for superhero movies and action movies and, hell, movies in general.
What else? Characters you wouldn't expect to do so manage to steal every scene they're in: Drax, Bruce and Wanda are probably the best they've ever been portrayed. Nobody's out of character which, considering the scope of the cast, is astonishing. Markus & McFeely actually manage to make me like Steve, which hasn't happened since TFA. Cameos everywhere, including some AMAZING ones you wouldn't expect. Humour is appropriate to who's making the jokes (watching James Gunn gags play off of Taika Waititi dialogue is brilliant). Also, the lore/physics is brilliant. The way the Infinity Stones work - how the writers/directors manage to clearly define the traits of each and stop them from blurring into each other is masterfully done. I actually liked the CGI, which pretty much never happens. And Thanos. Oh my GOD, Thanos. I hate to say it, but the film wouldn't be half as good without him. The end-credits scene is one of the best scenes in the film.
Oh - and I'm traumatised. I'm still in shock. Bring your tissues and a hand to hold, folks. You'll need it.