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. Feel free to back out if that's you.

Author's Note: And I have no idea how to tag this, but I feel I should warn ya that Tony is 17yo in this and talking about past sexual partners as well as offering sex to someone he had just met.

Submitting Info:
Stacked with: Hogwarts (Term 11); MC4A
Individual Challenges: Misunderstood; Metahuman MC; Hydra MC; Chilled Iron Bribery (Y); Mastermind MC; Hitter MC; Hacker MC; Winter Wonderland; Seeds; Shipmas; Tissue Warning; Interesting Times; New Fandom Smell [Avengers]; Team Logic; Marvelous Cinema; Location, Location, Location; Themes & Things A [Love] (Y); Themes & Things B [Protection] (Y); Feeling So Logical []; Neurodivergent; Quiet Time; Flags & Ribbons; Letter of the Day; Short Jog; Yellow Ribbon; Yellow Ribbon Redux; Two Cakes!
House: Hufflepuff
Assignment No.: Term 11 – Assignment 02
Subject (Task No.): n/a
Other Hogwarts Challenges: Romance Awareness [D13] (Soulmate is only person who can't hurt you) (Hurt/Comfort); Insane Prompt Challenge [651] (Oscar Wilde quotation); 365 [75] (Tongue); Scavenger Hunt [63] (Write a Winter themed fic.); Galleon Club (Hurt/Comfort)
Space Address (Prompt): [1E] (Bundle)
Representation(s): Tony Stark/Bucky Barnes; Autistic Tony Stark
Bonus Challenges: Lyre Liar; Rock of Ages; Grease Monkey; Abandoned Ship; Second Verse (Lovely Coconuts; For the Vine; Lock & Key; Unwanted Advice; Middle Name; Zucchini Bread; Persistence Still); Chorus (Unicorn; Larger than Life; Eternal Boredom; Tomorrow's Shade; Mouth of Babes; Peddling Pots; Machismo; Fizzy Lemonade; Wabi Sabi; Pear-Shaped)
Tertiary Bonus Challenges: T3 (Thimble); SN (Rail; Ameliorate); FR (Evolution); HoSE (Caprice)
Word Count: 1648

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Eyes Skyward
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Tony stared into the night sky. He was leaning against the base of the monument he had installed over his mother's grave. The angel with her face had its wings half-curled around itself and the child it was holding. He had explained it to the press as symbolic of how Maria had helped so many children through her foundations, how she had protected them from the violence of street life. The Maria Stark Foundation had certainly done that and with Maria Stark at its helm, the Foundation had been a powerful force for good.

No one had to know that it had been the child closest to Maria that had needed the most protection.

Never let them see your weaknesses.

Starks are made of iron.

This far from the city, the sky was filled with stars. Even the cold bite to the air had nothing on the crystalline iciness of the glittering stars. Tony loved their beauty, but still he missed the moon. Maybe it was crazy, but the moon was an old friend. More often than not, Tony found himself talking to it just the same as anyone would talk to a flesh and blood companion. That was not unusual for him, though, because he talked to his bots like they were people, too.

"You never met the bots," Tony said suddenly. He didn't know if he was addressing the stars, the absent moon, or the specter of his mother. "Howard did, when they did the write up on Comdex earlier this year. I took the bots there. They needed to know there's more to the world than my 'shop. I brought them home when I graduated, but that last week was rather busy for you. December always is. So, yeah, you didn't meet what's likely to be your only grandkids."

The crunch of ice breaking nearby drew Tony back to the present. Certain that it was just his current bodyguard—Greg, he thought this month's model was called—Tony didn't bother to drop his gaze from the sky immediately. It could be a journalist though, and the idea of having his grief plastered across yet another tabloid was enough to draw his gaze away from the universe that refused to swallow him whole as it ought to.

His eyes landed on the man standing in the shadow of the crypt directly across from Maria's monument. Tony had been kidnapped enough times to recognize someone sent to kill him. He was the heir to the greatest iron monger in the last century and a genius in his own right. Even with a bodyguard, kidnapping and assassination attempts were surprisingly common. Maybe Tony should have felt more alarmed at the sight of yet another one, but instead, he just felt resigned. If this was how he would go out, then so be it.

Maybe he was just bad ore, like Howard had always hinted with his reminders of what a Stark was. Maybe it would better for him to be gone, removed like an impurity during smelting. Maybe this was just his destiny, just as fate had decreed.

"Well, I hope you didn't hurt Greg," Tony quipped before leaning his head back against the marble base. "He's only in the middle of the book he's reading, and nothing sucks more than going into the great yonder with that hanging over ya."

Nothing happened for a long moment. Tony blinked at the stars that he could still see. Slowly, he lowered his gaze again. The man was closer now, not hidden in shadows. A black muzzle like thing covered the bottom of his face. Tony was fairly certain that it had a simple rebreather in it, maybe just a filter system. Either way, the man's eyes burned above them, for all the world looking like he was trying to feel every emotion possible at once. Tony could sympathize with that, because he often felt like he was going to combust with everything he was trying to feel. Not right now, though. Right now, he just felt numb, like the cold around him had sunk into the core of him.

"I'm not trying to tell ya how to do your job or anything," Tony said, "but maybe move things along a bit? It's really just a saying that looks can kill."

The man stalked closer. Tony licked his lips unconsciously. Damn if the guy didn't have a murder strut to beat all murder struts. Seriously, if the guy wasn't about to kill him, Tony would totally proposition him just because of that efficient walk. Then the guy flipped a knife out of somewhere—Tony was watching him the entire time and still wasn't certain where it had come from—and Tony couldn't stop the whine of want even as said knife was pressed against his throat. Unfortunately, Tony's mouth began to run away as his brain went off on several tangents.

"Okay, maybe I was wrong, because damn, that was hot. Don't judge me, Rambo, but you're playing to my competency kink."

Tony tilted his head back as the blade pressed just a tiny bit harder against his neck. He panted against the pressure, not daring to swallow. His would-be assassin growled at him as if frustrated by something. Only then did Tony realize that the man was straddling his legs, just a few inches more and Tony would be able to grind up against him. Those few inches might as well have been a mile because Tony couldn't move with cutting himself. Tony groaned again.

"Look, either fuck me or go ahead and put me out of my misery. Death by sexual frustration shouldn't be a thing, but darling, you're pushing me close here."

His assassin reached up with a hand that glinted in the starlight and removed the rebreather muzzle thing. Tony's mouth went dry at the reveal of his very kissable lips. Tony had kissed a lot of people through his years at MIT, and he had slept with far more despite Rhodey's interference (his platypus had an issue with the age difference between him and the other students). The point was, Tony could reasonable consider himself an expert on kissable lips, and this guy definitely had very kissable lips. Like, his lips could definitely qualify for the kissing Olympics, if there were such a thing, which there should be.

The assassin pressed a (metal!) finger against Tony's lips, stopping the flood of thoughts that had been spilling from them. Impishly, Tony flicked his tongue against the finger. The man's eyes dilated farther than what should have been required even in the dimness of the cemetery. Impulsive as ever, Tony did it again, earning a little growl of frustration from the man.

"You talk a lot," the man told him without any inflection, just like how Tony got sometimes when he was tired. Tony grinned at the irony. Rhodey's favorite saying was that Tony was going to talk himself into an early grave, and here he was, in a cemetery with a knife pressed against his throat while he flirted with the man sent to kill him. Seriously, it was like the setup to a bad fanfic, one of the ones that always ended with Kirk giving into Spock's pon farr. "Do you ever stop?"

"Only when I'm dead, Rambo," Tony quipped. "Care to share a little death with me?"

"I cannot kill you," Rambo said, a trace of confusion leaking into his voice. While his arousal didn't really fade, Tony had the growing urge to cuddle the man to match it. This show better get on the road, before Tony ended up planning something that would make Rhodey yell at him, like bringing home an assassin like one would a lost cat. Rambo's expression looked lost enough that it should totally fit. "I can't. I don't know why, but I cannot comply with orders. I am malfunctioning."

"That's okay, sugarsnap." Working off an instinct that he didn't know he had, Tony reached up slowly and pushed the blade away. The assassin looked even more confused as he let it happen. "I'm something like a mechanic. Come back to my workshop, and we'll see about fixing ya. Maybe it's not even a malfunction. Maybe it's just that you're tired of being a murder-kitten. Maybe you just want to be a kitten for a while."

"I…" The man blinked as if he was having trouble processing the idea. He appeared to be examining Tony for any trace of manipulation, which was fair. Even Tony couldn't always tell any more when he was doing it, because both Maria and Howard, as well as Ana and Jarvis, had made sure that he would always know how to get what he needed out of a situation. "I am willing to submit to maintenance. May I make a request?"

"Anything," Tony answered, a bit surprised at the honesty he put into the word. He would give this man anything, despite having just met him under these less than stellar conditions.

"I would prefer if maintenance not include a full wipe," he whispered, as if ashamed of the request. "They hurt."

Tony had no fucking clue what a full wipe was, but everything in him threatened to revolt at the idea of deliberately doing it to the man. Oh, yeah, Rhodey was definitely going to yell, because there was no fucking way that Tony was letting his assassin go back to whoever the fuck had sent him. No one should ever be afraid to ask (ask! Not even demand but ask!) to not be hurt. Tony was definitely adopting a murder-kitten with a metal arm and astonishing knife handling skills.

"You are a confusing handler," the man told him. Tony smiled at him before giving him a sassy salute.

"Just wait until you get to know me. Then the real confusion sets in."