Chapter Notes

TW for discussions around Alcohol dependency and unhealthy family relationships
It´s not that prominent in the story overall, but I thought I should mention it for this chapter.

Wow, where did all this seriousness come from? Character development who?

Also: I love Rhodey, he is usually one of my favorites in Fanon. Then I rewatched Ironman (Yes, I am rewatching the movies to get the details right. No, my sleeping schedule is not doing me any favors since I started.) and he was a bit of a meh friend around the weapon production thing? So that´s where the pettiness comes from. :P

Chapter 5 – A guide to making friends for the socially awkward and inept (AKA me :))

Stark, or rather Tony now as he had told me to call him when I supplied him with the second cup of hot chocolate, passed my data off as his, so the agencies could use it.

There was a flurry of activity from the governments side, but it still took them until the end of October until they finally arrested Stane and many of his accomplices in a giant operation. Compared to the fallout in the movie this was way bigger. My theory was that Shieldra had covered their butts and a lot of implicated people went free. With my intervention and the involvement of the FBI and the Secret Services though there was much more attention on the investigation.

Supplying terrorists with first-rate weapons is not taken lightly here. This was barely 8 years after 9/11 after all.

In those weeks until the arrest I had become a silent background installation in the Stark residence. Tony didn´t comment on it, glad to have someone to distract himself with when he came out of one of his engineering binges.

That he enjoyed my cooking helped too. I couldn´t do a whole lot else in the mansion besides cooking and studying so my expertise in the kitchen raised considerably. I tried out many of Domi`s recipes. Tony took a liking to my hot chocolate, he tried to pester me into telling him the secret to it´s "creamy goodness". I just smiled mysteriously and said: "Magic." Of course, he didn´t know I was telling the truth. I had found the perfect cocoa in a little shop in Belgium and portaled there regularly. The recipe had been perfected over months through intensive testing by Domi and yours truly.

Pepper liked it too. I met her my second day in Malibu and we got along famously. A little bribery with sweet things and she liked me immediately. It helped that my presence in the house led to Tony adopting a healthier life-style – he ate more (not just take-out), drank less and got out of the lab more often. Nothing crazy, but it did seem to make Pepper feel better.

One weekend Pepper and I went shopping together and she confided in me that she had been seriously afraid when she got informed of the ongoing investigation of Stane´s dealings. She had been dealing with Tony´s self-destructive habits for years now.

The only times I left, I either met up with Pepper and Domi or I went out searching for the remnants of the Mark I and it´s plans. I knew Tony was working on the Mark II. The government agents admitted that they wouldn´t be able to retrieve all Stark weapons from the wrong hands and Tony had not liked that.

That same evening, he had sat on a balcony outside with a glass of whiskey in his hand, the bottle standing next to him, and stared out on the ocean with a grim look on his face. I sat down next to him, silent, waiting to see if he would start speaking. He did.

"You usually avoid me when I´m drinking."

I was a bit surprised at his start.

"Noticed that, did you? I should know by now not to underestimate you.", I said lightly, not answering his implicit question. He persisted on the topic though, undeterred by my evasive answer.

"Why? And why don´t you drink?", Tony asked. He didn´t sound accusing, just curious, but he also didn´t let up. I grimaced. I didn´t much care for talking about this.

With a sigh I answered: "It´s a long story and not all that happy. I don´t talk about it much because there are plenty of people who hear my reasoning and still think arguing about this with me is a good idea."

I screwed up my mouth in disgust at the memories of those talks and continued.

"My mom was an alcoholic. Mostly functioning though, so barely anyone knew. She hid it well, even from dad and me. Snuck off in the middle of the night, only drank the sweet high percentile stuff so you wouldn´t smell it on her. She almost drank herself to death, would have in time if she hadn´t died early. She knew it was too much, with her medicine, heart disease, chain-smoking… She knew but she didn´t really want to change. Only made nominal efforts to appease dad. She was self-destructing and she didn´t care.

It fucks with your head. I remember coming downstairs shortly after midnight on my 18th birthday, couldn´t sleep. Exited you know? I was in the living room when she came stumbling in. Totally drunk. She passed out on the kitchen table.

You just can´t go from seeing that to laughing at your friend doing the same at the next party. I don´t like the taste much anyway and every time I see alcohol my stomach just sinks."

I drew in a breath to get the pressure off my chest that had been building up. Tony was watching me attentively now.

"So yeah, I distance myself from you when you drink. Defense mechanism. That way I don´t have to feel responsible. People are surprisingly unrelenting about this. They become very defensive of their habits, as if I had forbitten them to drink when it had been them trying to get me to drink that started the conversation. Of course, I don´t tell them all the depressive details. Just that I have someone with an alcohol addiction in my family, but they never take the hint. This happens like 3 out 5 times. Eventually I only came to parties when close friends of mine celebrated something important and always left early."

I shrugged my shoulders as I finished and looked back at Tony. He seemed pensive and shifted his weight backwards in his seat. I was telling him mostly the truth. My mom had still been alive when I had left, but I couldn´t tell him that.

"I see.", he said. "My dear old dad was a drunk too. Crashed his car on the side of a road and killed himself and mom. I suppose I know where you are coming from."

He raised the glass in his hand up to his eyes, turning it slowly and watching the whiskey flow around the ice. I hummed in agreement.

"Everyone reacts to trauma differently. I have heard more than once that refraining totally from any alcohol is not a healthy way of dealing with this either. They think I am depriving myself from having fun. I don´t agree with them, usually because they insist on knowing more about me than I do, but I can see where they are coming from. So, don´t think I´m suggesting you are becoming your father."

I quirked my lips upwards.

"You can become an unhealthy mess completely independent from your parents fuck-ups."

Tony snorted at that.

"Well, I´ll try to cut down on my drinking.", he threw out lightly. Even though he said it like it was a side note I knew he was serious.

"Thanks.", I said. I side-eyed him and smirked.

"My hero!", I threw after fawning at him. He smiled but got bitter quickly.

"Yes, sold terrorists weapons, quite the hero.", he bit out. He seemed frustrated at himself. So his joking mood hadn´t really returned yet. I wanted to get him out of his slump and I couldn´t be as soft as I usually would be, or he would just sulk on.

"First up, you didn´t sell them weapons, Stane did. Secondly, what are you going to do about it? I don´t mean in a "welp, shit happens, let´s just move on" way, I mean… Aren´t you rich? A genius? Don´t you have ample resources? Then find a way! Use your brain and stop felling sorry for yourself and the world. Go track down these weapons and make sure they won´t hurt anybody anymore!", I ranted at him, getting more and more into it. I didn´t even notice his eyebrows rising at my passion. He laughed and I stopped dead. I pretended to clear my throat to cover up my red cheeks.

I didn´t like telling people what to do (no matter how many old group project partners might disagree with that statement), but I knew he needed to hear that.

Tony started getting pensive again. Seeing him think so much over something that didn´t have anything to do with engineering while intoxicated was slightly unnerving. Either I had fulfilled my goal of getting him to start with revamping the Mark II to be able to fight or we wouldn´t have a house standing here when the sun rose in the morning.

He started grinning.

"I think you´re right. High time Tony Stark does something about this. I knew I didn´t just keep you around for your hot chocolate.", the inventor announced with enthusiasm. He put the alcohol aside and started to make his way to the lab.

I sighed, happy that I got the "plot" back on track. I wanted to enjoy the dissipating warmth in the air for while longer, so I made myself comfortable while calling after him: "You know my hot chocolate is damn well worth it!"

But before I could close my eyes and take a little nap, Tony suddenly gripped me by the arm. He dragged me with him to the lab while I just stared at him confused.

"Ah, no you don´t!", he said without looking back. "You´re coming with me. My motivational coach and voice of reason 2.0. Congrats, you´ve been promoted!"

I laughed nervously.

"You know just because Pepper likes me doesn´t mean I am very responsible either, right? Isn´t this like the blind leading the blind or however that saying goes? I did kind of illegally hack the servers of your company before…"

Tony brushed me off with a wave of his hand. He let me go and started fiddling with pieces of gear on his worktable.

"What are talking about, I said voice of reason, not a lawyer. Just because it´s illegal, doesn´t mean it´s wrong-", he explained patiently, totally ignoring my hesitant mutter of "That doesn´t sound right, are you sure?" and started talking about his plans. Apparently, the footage of the newscast about the regions the Ten Rings operated in had haunted him for a while. I sighed and gave up.

Ever since that I spent a good portion of my time at the mention in a corner of Tony´s lab. Occasionally, I helped patch him up after one of his tests. Most of the time Tony rambled science talk at one understanding JARVIS and one thoroughly in-over-his-head beginner sorcerer that had stopped taking physics classes nearly five years ago after almost flunking the course.

Whenever I saw an opportunity, I stole myself away to search for and get rid of the pieces that would have given Stane everything he needed to become the Ironmonger in another lifetime. Now that Tony would debut as Ironman soon, I didn´t want him to be confronted with his Mark I used against him. Without the arc reactor it was just a giant pile of trash but I didn´t want to chance it.

I had read enough fanfics in which the plotline mysteriously repaired itself – because fate! - to be paranoid.

It took me 4 weeks and a lot of scanning for terrorist activity before I found the plans and the half-assembled armor. Turns out finding something in the middle of a desert is really fucking difficult. Even with Ree.

I snuck in under the cover of the night. I was tempted to try out one or two spells to make this easier but I didn´t want to be spotted should they fail to work properly.

Good old-fashioned infiltration it is. Well, with a power-ring of course.

Still, I had two close calls with guards that made my heart feel like it was going to explode. The tent with my targets was surprisingly not all that heavily guarded. It conveniently also stood right next to some crates that Ree confirmed to be explosives. I grinned a manic smile. This was coming together nicely. I created a cartoony string that was burning up while I took cover behind some rocks. The loud explosions and panicked voices covered my maniacal laughter. Giggling I got out of there.

In my defense, I get slightly loopy when I don´t get enough sleep.

It was December now. Ironman had been flighting multiple successful missions already and I had given Tony my tips on how to stay out of the radar of the army – literally. That also meant he hadn´t been forced to rely on Rhodey to bail him out with the air force. No one needed to know that that took Ree making quite a bit of interference. It had been somewhat awkward to avoid Tony´s suspicious questions when I had brought the topic up, but he let me distract him for now.

My excuses and nervous smiles to cover up my unexplainable knowledge and actions were clumsy at best, however I´d like to think that is the reason Tony didn´t confront me about it. For now, he seemed appeased with waiting for me to explain myself. I resolved to do just that before I left for New York.

My original plan would have had me wait, but I was already staying longer in Miami than I had anticipated and I had come to trust Tony (famous last words). Also, without Ironmonger there was no real reason for Tony to come out as Ironman, which I saw as beneficial for my accords-plan.

Because of this decision to trust Tony I saw no problem in showing even more inconsistencies. I had upgraded Ree with some software to produce music months ago. We had been working on recreating my favorite songs from the future for months now. The ring's ability to create simulations on its own was invaluable for this little project of mine. My memories might have been better than normal because Ree boosted my body to tiptop condition, but I still had to do a lot of fiddling for each song.

It wasn´t that I didn´t find music I liked in this time. I just missed some of my favorite musicians that were mostly still in school. Thank God for Queen though. Bridged the time well until I could build up my playlists.

Anyway, all this led to me singing Taylor Swift´s album folklore while cooking. I was peeling potatoes while on the second verse of "the last great american dynasty" when I caught a glimpse of my audience out of the corner of my eye.

I stopped and turned around.

There stood Tony, grinning like the cat that caught the canary, and next to him was Rhodes. I pouted, half because they had interrupted me and half because I refused to feel embarrassed at being caught.

I had nothing to be embarrassed about, my singing voice was quite beautiful. Somewhat deep, but great range and a clear timbre. I had been in a choir even before and could confidently say that I preferred my voice now. I straightened out my apron full of pink kittens with fairy wings.

Ah. That was a bit embarrassing.

"Tony switched out all the aprons two days after he saw me using them.", I felt the need to point out before anyone said anything. If possible, Tony smiled even further. Rhodes's lips twitched, clearly familiar with Tony´s sense of humor.

"Why wouldn´t I, they look great on you! Rhodeybear, that is my new live-in cook and member of the board of directors, Al. Al, this is Rhodey. The man with the plan when it comes to the air force. AKA the army liaison to SI and one of my oldest friends.", Tony introduced us still smiling bright. Rhodey made to shake my hand, but I waved him away gesturing at the half-peeled potatoes.

"Nice to meet you! Tony talked quite a bit about you. Although I feel obligated to say that I do not in fact live here. I still sleep in my hotel room, most of the time…", I said, mumbling towards the end. Again, Rhodes looked amused. Tony on the other hand was confused.

"You do? Why? You´re here most of time anyway, just check out. What am I supposed to do when I want hot chocolate at 2 o'clock in the morning?!", he cried out in false horror. I leveled him a deadpanned stare.

"Nothing, because if you wake me up at 2 in the morning for chocolate, I will hurt you. Badly.", I sniffed.

"You´re my chocolate dealer now! Take responsibility!", Tony bantered back.

"Fine, fine. But don´t come crying back to me when you get diabetes."

Because we were already on the topic, I went over to the other counter to start preparing three cups of hot chocolate, faintly listening to Tony trying to convince Rhodes of the wonders of my cocoa.

We sat down for a couple of hours, lunch laying forgotten in the kitchen and talked. Rhodes tried to subtly investigate me and seemed sufficiently appeased after I answered his questions. He caught up with Tony, he was apologetic that it took him so long to check up on Tony after he heard of Stane.

That whole ordeal hadn´t been as big in the news as one would have expected, most likely because Pepper was prepared to contain the bad press and had successfully spun the story in to a positive. Taking responsibility and all that.

In the eyes of the press, Tony was vindicated. His decision to shut down the weapons dealing was founded on necessity and he had figured out the traitor singlehandedly. My involvement was kept out of the news. Only Pepper, Happy (who I had only superficial interactions with, but who was quite nice) and now Rhodey knew about me bringing the data to Tony.

Tony raised an eyebrow when the colonel described the drink, I had given him as "not bad", though he refrained from commenting.

Then the conversation turned to Rhodes basically repeating how the army was not all that happy with Tony. He was very forthright about them pushing him to try to convince Tony. He wasn´t very persistent either, he seemed to understand how serious his friend was about the decision. Didn´t mean it wouldn´t sour my opinion of him a bit.

When the colonel left, Tony turned to me with a suspicious look.

"Not bad?", he asked. I huffed indignant.

"As if I would waste the expensive stuff on someone who couldn´t be bothered to show up. He got the discounter version. Should be glad, I could have easily given him food poisoning.", I explained. It wasn´t like I genuinely disliked the army-man, I was just a bit displeased with him right now.

Tony´s mouth twitched.

"You can be really petty, you know that?"

I just crossed my arms and pouted. When that made him laugh, I decided to ignore the genius and went back to cooking.

The next month went by quickly. I had been studying the basics of magic for nearly a year now and had very solid foundation now. With the encouragement from the Ancient One I chose runes as my main subject until I had earned my mastery.

Runes, because I wanted to be able to create lasting ways of containing the infinity stones and protecting against them. The sorcerer supreme had already consented to letting me experiment with the Eye of Agamotto. I wasn´t ready for that yet though. I also had the idea of combining the runes with my constructs to see how they would be affected.

I noticed that Tony barely drank anymore while at the mansion, which made me feel quite touched. Apparently, our talk had stuck more than I could have hoped for.

When it came time for the New Year's celebrations, Tony went out on a big party, one of his first big outings since Afghanistan. I stayed at the mansion with Domi and Pepper. Because the PA had been taking over more and more of the CEO´s tasks, she hadn´t been able to go visit family. I was surprised she didn´t complain, especially because we had not told her yet that she would be made CEO next year. I silently mourned all the Pepperony moments that hadn´t happened. Those two didn´t seem to be anywhere near getting together. Domi and Pepper got along great at least. It was a very nice evening.

In mid-January I manned up (ha! Get it? Because I´m male now?) and sat Tony down. I had no idea how he would react to my revelations, so I was more than a bit nervous. It was obvious too, I was shifting in my seat and trying to avoid Tony´s eyes.

"So…", I drew out the words. "Um, I can do magic?"

Damn you brain!

Chapter End Notes

Am I thinking about making Domi/Pepper a thing? Yes, I am. In my head they are fitting together so well. Domi is sneaking up on me again, I swear. That´s still ways off though.
...
They would be such a power couple! And so... responsible!