Legal Disclaimer: I own my stuff, but not the original source material. That belongs to whoever. Also, the opinions and interpretations I use here may not reflect the same in said whoever that owns the source material. Look, I'm just a poor college librarian. Suing me isn't going to get you anything but tears.
Warning: This work may be offensive to some readers. In addition to continuing themes, there is referenced canon child abuse & manipulation. Feel free to back out if need be.
Author's Note: Just a reminder that if you don't like how a character is depicted, you are better off buying a ducky and complaining to it than leaving a review telling me about it. This entire series is not and never was one that pretended MCU canon didn't happen.
Submitting Info:
Stacked with: Quidditch League (Post S10); Hogwarts 2.0 (Term 01); RAVEN (2023); MC4A (Fa-Y6)
Individual Challenges: Red Instead; Condiment Shelf; Xs & Os; Missing Link (Y); WIP It; Quaffles; Bludgers; Pet Food; Vegetable Broth; Fruit Stand; Purple Scholar; Feather Head; SHIELD MC; Old Shoes; Sandbox (Y); Crossing Over; Reader; Cinematic; Binger; Graphic; Animated; Singer; Gamer; Alpha & Omega; Mark It UP; Dreamers; Tossed Chum; Criminal MC; Disabled; Ethnic & Present; Neurodivergent; Rian-Russo Inversion [x2]; Short Jog; The Real MC; The Story Goes On; Eating Cake (Y); Exchange; Green Ribbon; Two Cakes (Y); Salt Wrench; Bi Bi Bi; Shipwreck; Zed Era; Rainbow Connection; Hold the Mayo
Hogwarts House: Ravenclaw
Assignment: Term 01-04
Subject [Task (Prompt)]: Folklore [Task#1: Write about a widow.]
Other Hogwarts Challenges: Gather [Wizard (Bladesinging - ALT)](Omegaverse); Case [Occamy](Exhaustion)
Post Season QL Challenges: Bingo [A4](Taking the Blame)
RAVEN Challenges: Colors [127](Sand); Items [118](Stained Glass); Settings [16](Bright)
Other MC4A Challenges: FaB [1C](Cobweb); Chim [Bugwort]("The Anonymous Ones" – Dear Evan Hansen; Turned Left Instead AU; Race Bend); Hunt [Fa WD (Russian)]; Fire [x3](Scented); Garden [Feeling Trope-ical (Canon Divergent); Aya's Redux Blend (Tony Stark); Tropes (Omegaverse)]; Harvest [x()]; Hang [Phrase1](n/a); Soup [O](Omegaverse)
Representation(s): Filipino & Autistic Tony Stark; Natasha Romanoff; Omegaverse Civil War AU
Primary & Secondary Bonus Challenges: Shiver & Shake; Sitting Hummingbird; Second Verse (Ladylike; Not a Lamp; Persistence Still; Found Family; Nontraditional; Sneeze Weasel; Zucchini Bread; Middle Name; Spinning Plates; Unwanted Advice; For the Vine; Lovely Coconuts; Trickster's Union; Grease Monkey; Lyre Liar; Muck & Slime; Corvid Brain); Chorus (Odd Feathers; Wabi Sabi; Bee Haven; Machismo; Peddling Pots; Tomorrow's Shade; A Long Dog; Larger than Life; Unicorn; Wind Beneath; Abandoned Ship; In the Trench; Surprise!; Turtle-Duck); Demo 1 (Queen Bee); Demo 2 (Sailor's Delight)
Tertiary & Generic Bonus Challenges: T3 (Toad); SN (Rail; Negate); FR (Satisfaction); O3 (Oust); HoSE (n/a); War (Monomania; Obstruction; Sanctuary; Ennui); TY (Ntaiv; Kulonbozo); Mea (Ennui); Wings (Dactylology)
Word Count: 1307 words
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Between the Lines
Part 04: Function Naturally
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Tony was beyond exhausted by the time he had wrapped up the strategic meeting with the Blacks. The stress of the situation was only half the issue. He had never slept well in general but especially so on his own. It had been an easily solved issue before Afghanistan. He could just go pick up someone at a club or similar and trade sex for a few hours next to a warm body. The reactor had complicated things, especially with people threatening to kill him with it.
He hadn't been this sleep deprived since his first few months at MIT, when he was adjusting to having his own apartment away from everyone. At boarding school, unpresented pups were kept in the same dorms with multiple nesting beds. At home, there was his mother or the Jarvises to nest with. It was at MIT that he had been truly alone for the first time. But around the middle of his first term, Rhodey had literally picked him up at a frat part, and they had been nesting together ever since.
But Rhodey was still active duty in the United States Air Force. Even as liaison, there were times that he was sent to the other side of the world to oversee projects or deployed on missions. Being the only other pilot trained to use a suit, those missions were often under communication blackouts that Tony did try his best to respect. Wishing that the alpha was around more for Tony to nest with was selfish enough without Tony hacking the systems without more reason than just missing him.
Then Tony had been with Pepper who was a particular kind of territorial. She never directly said that she didn't want Tony nesting with Rhodey, not like she had whenever she had hustled out his one-night-stands. However, she had had this way of being passively aggressive about it. Tony never quite got the handle of how to deal with it beyond buying things for her and avoiding his nest partner of most of his life. Maybe Howard had been right all along, and Tony was just a shitty omega who was destined to end up alone.
But Pepper had decided that they were on a break from each other. She wasn't even showing up at scheduled events to promote Stark Industries programs and products. So even before all of the business of the last few weeks, Tony hadn't been sleeping well.
Then there had been the scrambling to handle things in the wake of the Lagos incident, with exactly as much help from the Avengers involved as Tony had come to expect. It couldn't have happened at a worse time honestly, because after over two years of hard work and negotiation, they were finally ready for the ratification phase of the Sokovia Accords.
For all of the issues highlighted by the Ultron issue and the subsequent renaming of the Accords, Tony was actually surprised to find that not even Natasha Romanoff had been following their development. Steve wasn't a surprise. The alpha had difficulty operating a mobile phone. The internet might have been a bit too much. But Natasha choosing to not act on the information emailed to the team for their feedback was baffling.
And now, on top of everything else, Steve had to go and create yet another disaster for Tony to handle. Luckily, Andromeda was the one actually in charge of the legal aspects for the Blacks, rather than Sirius. She was much more level-headed than her cousin. Sirius was out for blood. No matter how much Tony understood, it still wasn't particularly helpful. Andromeda had practically dragged Sirius out by his ear to return to their nearby hotel room.
Harry and Bucky—Yasha—were due to be escorted from Bucharest some time tomorrow after being cleared by the Omega Negotiator assigned to their case. Andromeda would be meeting them here, probably with the very overprotective Sirius. The mated pair would be giving their official statements about both recent events and what Yasha could remember of his time as Hydra's captive assassin. Hopefully, for Steve's sake, the disruption hadn't been enough to scuttle the chances of Harry's conceiving this heat. The court of public opinion wouldn't care if these sorts of things can take a while.
Tony stood in the annex between the conference rooms and the corridor leading back to Steve's cell. The bright setting sun spilled a rainbow of light on the sand-colored tiles as it passed through the geometric motif of stained glass. He was so tired that he was contemplating just leaving and going back to his own hotel room. Maybe after some room service, he would be exhausted enough to manage at least a few hours of sleep. It wouldn't solve all of the problems, but maybe it would renew his edge for dealing with them.
"Who was that?" Natasha questioned as she sidled up next to him. Tony blinked at her. Had he slept on the plane from Boston to London? He knew he hadn't from London to Geneva, let alone from Geneva to Berlin. But if he had slept on the way to his godmother's funeral, then that would mean he had only been up for fifty-two hours now, and that wasn't so bad. He had done longer stints. "Tony?"
"Yeah," he acknowledged. He rubbed a hand over his face. "That was the representatives for the omega that Steve accosted."
"Did you manage to explain that it was just a misunderstanding?"
"What?" Tony looked at her in confusion. Maybe it had been longer than only fifty-two hours, because what she had just said made no sense. "Why would I do that?"
"Tony," she said softly, as if he was being exceptionally stupid on purpose. "If they press charges against Steve, that would make things difficult. I know you like playing hero in the media to feed your ego, but we shouldn't borrow trouble, not when there's so much going on already."
"This isn't borrowing trouble," Tony countered. "Steve created a lot of problems with his thoughtless action. He's creating even more by refusing to cooperate with his lawyer." He swallowed hard as a sudden thought occurred to him. "Do you know who gave him the information on Bucky's location?"
"No," Natasha answered quickly. Her green eyes cut away from him. She brushed her red hair away from her face with the back of an impatient hand. "I told him to stay out of it."
"Yeah, that would be the smart thing to do." Tony tapped one finger against the face of his watch. The face of it turned an opaque white that could be easily mistaken as the light hitting it fully. "So no clue who he might have asked for help? None whatsoever?"
"No," she repeated. Her eyes darted around the annex before landing on Tony's face once more. Her tone was judgmental as she continued. "The UN guards haven't allowed me to visit either him or Sam."
"Yeah?" Tony couldn't help how his confusion leaked into his voice. After nearly eight years, he had gotten used to the way that he was always lacking in Natasha's eyes. Honestly, it was like being around his father or godparents, familiar in the way it stung. That still didn't mean that he understood what she wanted in this instance. "I think it's because of the Info Dump. You covered for them then, and they're probably thinking that you would again."
"Tony," Natasha scolded. He waved his hand to throw the topic away, too tired to keep from signing.
"It's been a long day," Tony interrupted, "and tomorrow looks to be even longer. I'm headed back to the hotel for the night."
"But Tony—"
"See you in the morning."
He quickly walked away before she could try to continue the conversation.
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To be continued
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