When Bucky Barnes is sent to kill the Starks, he does so easily until he sees their baby son in the back seat. Unable to kill him, he escapes with the child.
Living a life on the run, Bucky slowly breaks out of his Hydra conditioning and raises the boy as his own. As Tony grows, their bond only grows stronger, even as Bucky stops ageing.
#the other half of his superpower is the ability to locate coffee anywhere #which is how he knew what direction to start walking when he was in afghanistan #‘the nearest pot of coffee is 23 miles east’ #and then he started walking through the desert #honestly that’d be kind of a fun plot device #somebody write it I’m too lazy (via @buckykingofmemes)
There is a reason Tony never mentions that he’s a mutant. It’s not that he’s ashamed, or even that he’s afraid of the negative impact the news would have on the Stark name and his business.
It’s that he got such a fucking lame power.
The X-men can fly, control the weather, shoot lasers from their eyes, and make things go boom. Tony? Tony get’s the amazing ability to metabolize caffeine extra well (okay, on a level that would kill ten average people) and sense it for miles.
He’s one of those mutants whose powers fall into a category all their own. teeeechnically, he’s actually an alpha level mutant, given the complex way his body processes caffeine and the nearly fifty mile range on the sensor aspect of his talent, plus the degree of sensitivity. But in practice? The few people in the know mostly consider him to be a beta mutant, since his power isn’t really applicable as a defence or offense.
At any given moment he can tell you with pinpoint accuracy what things within a block of him have caffeine and what they are, even managing to differentiate between different kinds of coffee. He can even tell you who made it, if he’s met the person.
(He tries to explain it to Pepper and Rhodey, once. Tries to explain that it’s not that he’s measuring the level of caffeine in a pot of coffee really, it’s that everyone makes coffee differently. If he focuses, he can tell that the pot of coffee down in the accounting break room was made by Margery, not Cole, or Clarke, or Franchesca, because it feels like her. Numbers and irritation and impatience coupled with the peppermint sticks she likes to swirl in a cup of black. He knows he doesn’t manage it well when all he gets are indulgently confused smiles from his two friends.
Charles Xavier prattled a bit about possible subconscious empathic or telepathic impressions, but honestly Tony doesn’t really care. He just does what he does. It’s not like the mechanics really matter with a useless power like his. He doesn’t stay at Xavier’s long. Hanging with the X-men makes him feel like a toaster hanging out with sports cars.)
It’s not until he’s kneeling in scorchingly hot sand, an unforgivingly bright sun high in the sky above him and bits of scattered metal around him, that he’s thankful for the power evolution gave him. Because when he reaches out with that strange other sense of his, he can feel all the distant pinpricks of sensation that mean, ‘Here! There be coffee here!’. Most carry the notes of people who feel like the land around him, but one….. Smiling grimly, he heaves himself to his feet and looks east, towards the distant call that carries with it a taste of foreigntiredordersyessirdutythiscoffeeSUCKSman that tells him there are american soldiers that-a-way.
Tony couldn’t seep. Sometimes he managed a few hours if he was tired enough, so usually he went to the gym and worked out until he was exhausted. Tonight, though, he found the gym already occupied: Barnes, with his hair tied up, working steadily at the heavy bag. Normally Tony would make an awkward comment and leave him to it, but instead he just heads for the opposite side of the gym. After setting up at one of the far treadmills, Tony worked his way to a easy run. Barnes was laying his fists rhythmically into the bag, and the quiet thumping was sort of strangely soothing. Between the running and the thumping, Tony slipped into a near-trancelike state.
And then Barnes let out an ungodly howl, drew back his left fist, and slammed it straight through the heavy bag with a roar of, “DIE A THOUSAND BURNING DEATHS!”
Tony fell off the treadmill, scrambled to his feet, and booked it to the elevator.
kingofmemes posted:
holy shit you guys there was a spider on my punching bag !!! thanks to my many years of combat experience & martial arts training things are okay now
girlonstage asked: I have been feeling a desire for a happy Pepper and Tony fic, and if you wrote that, most certainly read and enjoy it. Also, hello! Hope your day had a thing that made you smile really wide :D
Mmmm well I got to get dinner on the dime of my summer program, all the students in it were there and the bill was pushing $400 and I spent the whole time talking with a few people including this dazzlingly gorgeous (although probably straight) girl in the program, so THAT was good, you are so sweet. I’ll admit I’m pretty tired to toss off a ficlet right now (between work and socializing and starting editing on one of my Actual Real Completed Novels, I have exactly zero brain), BUT, I’ll tell you about one fic I kind of want for this pairing.
Okay, so if I wrote this thing I would call it “Twelve” and it would be literally just happy, there would be very little angst, which is…probably why I haven’t gotten around to writing it, let’s call a spade a spade. But it would be all the times the number twelve has appeared in Tony and Pepper’s relationship, and I’m sure I’d come up with more while I wrote the thing, but here are a few that would definitely make the cut (with a total disregard for official timeline).
THE FIRST TIME: Tony has fired…so many personal assistants, okay, and definitely a few quit on grounds of “HE IS IMPOSSIBLE” after finding him asleep half-under a car or after he took apart their coffee machine or something, so Peggy Carter (I’ll fight you for Peggy as Tony’s quirky British aunt) is like “I’m going to handle this, kid,” and gets ahold of the massive list of Stark Industries employees and starts sifting through them for potentials. Once she has her list of possible candidates, she hacks into Tony’s work (actually she has his password because she knows him and he might be a genius but he’s also sentimental) and changes one value in a file he’s about to send out and makes sure it’s going to go to all of her selected candidates and ships it out. The next day a woman in a pair of ruthless heels with a stubborn set to her jaw and orange hair marches into Tony’s office and announces that there’s a mistake in his math–it’s 0.12 off.
ANOTHER TIME: So Pepper’s been considering quitting because her boss is…Tony Stark, and like even once he shapes up that’s got to be stressful, and she’s only been working for him for a few months at this point. So she takes a few minutes to steel herself and goes down to the lab and finds him drinking, which is…normal, honestly, but he’s not doing anything and the bots are all quiet and he’s just sitting there getting drunk and he looks so pathetic that she can’t bring herself to just quit. Pepper sits down next to him on the lab bench and he says hi, very quiet, and she asks what’s wrong, because Pepper’s like that, and he admits quietly that it’s the anniversary of his parents’ death. She should have known this, in retrospect, because the death of Howard Stark was BIG NEWS, but still: kind of slipped her mind. And he just sighs, this deep bone-shaking sigh, and leans to the side until he reaches her shoulder and says even quieter that it’s been twelve years now (he looks maybe twenty-ish in the flashback at the start of Civil War?), and Pepper decides she can put off quitting until tomorrow.
ANOTHER TIME: Pepper turns in her resignation twelve times. She also storms in to snatch the letter out of his hands and chew him out for his latest transgression and snarl “Of course I’m not quitting” when he reaches for the letter twelve times. She stops somewhere around the two year mark.
ANOTHER TIME: During Iron Man. Tony’s been missing for twelve days. Pepper has been handling media relations that whole time–she hasn’t cracked her perfectly smooth professional face once. She locks herself into her office, orders JARVIS to keep everyone out, and cries for two hours that twelfth day.
ANOTHER TIME: The twelve percent thing in Avengers? Yeah, that’s a running joke, what percent of the Tower Pepper’s responsible for, there would be a bit dealing with that.
ANOTHER TIME: I don’t fucking know, like, how much do you think the Chitauri damage is going to cost to fix? It’s fairly localized damage, but it’s impressive. So Tony and Pepper have a chat and they decide to donate twelve million dollars to the reconstruction effort, in addition to other stuff.
THE LAST TIME: Tony takes Pepper out for dinner and reserves the whole restaurant because he DOES actually learn from his mistakes and Pepper doesn’t love being made a public spectacle, and after the meal when she’s looking down at the dessert menu he sets a black velvet box on the table with a ring in it. The ring has a central sapphire–as blue as the dress ‘he’ got her for her birthday–surrounded by twelve minuscule diamonds. She says yes.
“The Avengers and Their Favorite T-Shirts” Series. (Post 1/3)
If you are interested, these t-shirts really exist (except Sam’s, it was a bit modified): Tony- Steve - Bucky- Sam
Next batch - 2016: Thor, Natasha, Clint and Bruce. Then: Wanda, Pietro, Scott and Rhodey. I’ll add The Vision and The Wasp later. Also in 2016: a Supernatural version feat. team Sam-Dean-Cas ♥
listen i am sure that’s what she told her co-workers the next day when they were like “so how drunk were you when you visibly melted in tony stark’s arms yesterday”
but i guarantee you people exist in multiple dimensions and this is not just a “oh no my co-workers are watching me” face
let me translate the inner monologue for you: oh my god he’s touching me oh my god he’s touching me *on my actual skin* oh my god oh my god ok it’s cool i’m cool oh god deodorant oh god
tony’s 100% a little shit about this too like “am i making you uncomfortable?” literally shut your suave face tony stark i am trying to project some Professionalism here Oh My God
she rants with like minimal prompting from tony
tony just stares oh god i can’t believe, he’s enjoying every second of this spectacle and then pepper’s sass shows anyway
he thinks she is So Fucking Cute like literally look at his face he’s just like. please just spend another 16 hours talking because you are So Fucking Cute when you’re sassy and flustered please never stop
“i’m just nervous because my co-workers” lmfao look at this nonsense
*looks at tony’s lips* *LITERALLY WRITES PEPPERONY SMUT/FLUFF IN HER HEAD*
there’s that moment when she’s like “what’s your ssn?” and tony can’t give her a good answer and she’s SO FUCKING SMUG ABOUT IT LIKE MM-HMM IS SOMEBODY SPEECHLESS? MMMMMMHMMMMMM GOOD YOU GOT THIS PEPPER THE UPPER HAND IS YOURS
and tony’s like
yes i am speechless and everything about you is fascinating
*proceeds to overwhelm pepper with the weight of his speechless fascination*
and that’s when pepper has an actual visible “oh fuck” moment
oh fuck what. is. this shit. i am fourteen years old and in love with the cutest boy in my class all over again. fuck. fuck. fuck. abort YES I NEED SOME AIR
honestly we all lose SO MUCH with any depiction of pepper as someone who Deigns To Put Up With Tony like, free yourselves of your chains and accept pepper who loses her Cool when it comes to tony and is not always Perfectly Rational And Flawlessly Objective Always, literally i just
like idk maybe i’ve been too poisoned by the iron man novelization but like
Chapter XI (as Pepper waits for Tony’s plane to land after captivity)
Finally she saw the plane, a C-17, in the distance. The little girl within her wanted to clap her hands in joy, but she knew that Hogan was watching. Besides, she was a professional and needed to project her professionalism whenever humanly possible. That was what she had kept telling herself when she’d been crying uncontrollably in the limo on the ride over.
and also
Chapter XV (the balcony scene)
“I’m sorry I was so uncomfortable,” she said. “I hate being the center of attention like that, and that’s why in high school when I was supposed to be in a play…”
Tony tilted his head, amused. Pepper was always the picture of total efficiency and poise, so it was delightful to him that she found herself disarmed by the situation. She was clearly aware of both her feeling of social disorientation and his enjoying it, as she continued, “No, never mind.” The words and thoughts were pouring out of her now. She seemed as if she wanted to stop talking, but couldn’t find a way to do so, and so she kept babbling. “But you know that’s why I never wanted to have a big wedding, you know, because I thought everyone would be looking at me wearing a dress.” Her eyes widened as she suddenly thought that she came across as if she were expecting Tony Stark to pop the question. “Oh, no, no – I’m not saying, like, ‘wedding.’ No, not like that. I’m just saying, you know…”
but my absolute favorite is how when pepper wants tony to know that she is a big deal – she, pepper potts, the picture of Cool and Professional, virginia ‘pepper’ potts, blurts out the words
“Tony, I’m not a cheeseburger.”
to which tony replies
“No. You’re not a cheeseburger.”
like literally IM1 and all related materials are my favorite things to have ever existed honestly
Imagine Natasha and Pepper get all the guys together and convince them to make a pin-up calendar for charity.
Steve is the immediate and only choice for July.
Sam Wilson volunteers before all the Avengers even find out about it.
Tony tries to convince them that he should be all 12 months; they let him have December.
When they don’t let him have every month, Tony insists Rhodey needs to be in it somewhere then; he manages to bribe him into it.
Bruce politely declines involvement. Somehow the Hulk ends up on the spread for March.
Clint thinks it’s a nude calendar and shows up with nothing but a bow and quiver. They let him go through with it under the condition that he’s not allowed to go full frontal. — Hawkeye’s majestic buttocks graces the page for May.
Not really knowing what this strange Midgardian custom is, Thor hears about Clint’s bold photo and insists on posing with nothing but Mjolnir. (He makes sure it’s well placed.) (November is a very popular month that year).
Not to be outdone by an archer and a demigod, Tony has his photo redone wearing exactly three pieces of the Iron Man suit. He proclaims there’s nothing half the women of America haven’t seen already.
After that, Tony immediately insists that Steve needs to pose with nothing but the shield. Everyone is astonished when he thinks on it for less than a minute before agreeing. “It’s for charity, right?”
Once Captain America goes for it, no one else can bring themselves to do anything less.
By the end, the entire calendar is full of beautifully photographed artistic nudes of male superheroes.
They make over $2 billion for a collection of their favorite charities.
Mad: #vision is confused but game#he points out he’s #uh #‘fully functional’ #on an as-needed basis #that freaks out the photog though #he poses with just the cape on #bucky insists he’s doing it if steve and sam are #because he’s too stubborn not to #he stares right into the camera #people either really like june or flip past it immediately #pietro’s the only one who doesn’t have a signature accessory to pose with #so he poses in a sprinter’s crouch #not pictured #wanda out of frame #alternately making fun of him and screeching #now everyone can say ‘i’ve gone blind’ in sokovian
