Tony Stark

Post-Chitauri invasion, there is the matter of bridges to consider. Along with Doctor Foster's determined work, SHIELD suddenly develops a sudden interest in having an Asgardian on-call.

For Tony, this means a package of information landing on his doorstep last night, a plane ride to New Mexico this morning.

So Darcy will come back to a man with his weight cocked on one hip, arms folded, waiting in the doorway.

"Darcy, right? The big guy said to tell you not to tase me."

Gotham City is its own little kettle of fish, one that most superheroes avoid at all costs. The city has a number of incredibly regional specific problems, a rich variety of villains and antiheroes and a specific set of challenges and players that you can't just walk into cold. Superheroes have a bad habit of being beaten by Gotham, coming in fresh and eager and washing out old and jaded, or dead. It is a city that likes to rip up naivete.

And recently, it's main export has been bad guys. The Riddler floats out of the sewers, makes it to Miami, and Miami is Tony's baby in so many ways (he loves New York too, but that's a city with an avalanche of heroes to its' name) that he goes fuck this shit and gets proactive. Does his research.

Iron Man goes to Gotham.

Well, more specifically, Tony Stark does, in his best suit where he goes to the best bar and orders the best scotch, schmoozes until he lands an invitation to a charity ball that he knows Bruce Wayne is going to bail on even though he's the one throwing it.

But it'll be a good opportunity to give Alfred a business card.

You'd have to be stupid or suicidal to be Tony Stark and be out in public without a bodyguard or the suit right now, but here he is all the same, in Central Park after dark. Not sleeping, but more importantly, not drinking.

Actually, right now he doesn't know which one would be worse. If he cracked, if he drank, black out drunk unconscious, maybe he wouldn't run through it again, the way he has every night for weeks now, too vivid, too repetitive to be anything other than significant. He can feel yellow-orange eyes on the back of his neck, the hint of a smile in the dark.

He ate pistachio icecream on this bench once, a thousand years and a million 'better not risk it' excuses ago.

Everything goes haywire afterwards, and Steve, all-American as wonderbread, manages to be mostly at the centre of the publicity storm. Clint and Nat are subtly whisked off, Bruce ducks for cover, Thor is on Asgard...

And Tony is the one who grabs his elbow right before the press conference, looks him dead in the eye, and asks;

"Are you good to do this, Cap?"

He's more of a black sheep can't-look-away trainwreck than a media darling, not that this spares him any scrutiny, but it does do away with a certain amount of performance anxiety when people expect the worst. Still, he remembers stepping in front of those cameras the first time, the days before.

They haven't really spoken since Shawarmas, he faintly regrets that now.

"They gave you cards, right?"