#even im2 pepper/nat is better than them sorry i have to say it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cowboyhorsegirl · 1 year

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omg evren please say more about tonynat on some sort of mission where they need to fake date!! <3

@meidui, you've never known this because i have unfortunately never gotten around to answering any of your asks before, but you always send the best ones <3 I started writing this response back in May and couldn't ever figure out how to write the last scene between tony & nat, but I've taken a crack at it now in the hopes that you can enjoy this insane infodump of meta & a bit of fic before you move on to healthier and happier things :)

!!!!!!!!!! ahhhh yes gladly !!!!!!!!!!!!

(and sorry this took so long i hope you don’t mind that I wrote you a novel lmfao)

((Also I’m going to talk A LOT about IM2 but bear in mind that it's been about a decade since i've watched it so if I misconstrue anything please let me know!))

First of all, I absolutely adore Tony and Natasha separately, and I think had they been able to interact more in the MCU canon they would have served to ease each other’s insecurities and curb their more self-destructive tendencies. There’s undoubtedly a lot of parallels between their histories and their motivations for choosing to be heroes:

they’ve got a lot of red in their ledgers, so to speak

they’re trying to even out the scale of all the harm they’ve done

they place the blame of those harms squarely on their own shoulders even though they are both–to varying degrees–victims of the systems they were a part of when enacting that violence (I will say I feel this is much more true in Nat’s circumstances with the KGB than in Tony’s with the US military-industrial complex, but the case can be made for him too what with Tony’s enduring addiction and mental health issues stemming from his relationship with his father who expressly expected him to take over the company [sidebar: i would make the case that tony does not and has never liked building weapons as these are not things that he chooses to do with his engineering prowess in childhood or at MIT, and while he is leading SI he acts out in ways that in my view indicate he’s deeply unhappy with his life and is trying to numb the pain] + the way he was manipulated and ultimately almost killed multiple times by Obadiah)

traumatic medical experiences involving painful, life-changing surgeries AND loss of bodily autonomy

But! There’s also some similarities in how they try to cope with these burdens. For example, they’re both extremely competent at what they do and in a perpetual state of trying-to-prove-themselves (this tends to function more internally for nat and more externally for tony) so their default mode is often to obscure what they feel/think in most situations from everyone but an extremely select group of trusted friends as a means of concealing emotional vulnerability. They are also both prone to throwing themselves into an unhealthy work/life balance because there’s always something more they specifically could be doing to help and it seems as though neither of them can bear to forgive themselves for inaction if their involvement could have saved even one more life regardless of the personal cost.

(That last point especially *COUGH endgame COUGH*)

So in my opinion they would’ve come to be able to recognize these habits in each other at a level of familiarity that Rhodey and Pepper do for Tony or that Clint does for Natasha, but in a shorter time period. Furthermore, because they see themselves in each other, I think they’d be much more discerning over when is the appropriate time to push the other hard to treat themself better because a coping mechanism is becoming overly destructive and when they should give the other a bit more leeway because, yeah, what you’re doing right now probably isn’t the most healthy way for you to process things in the moment but I understand where you’re coming from and I know that if I try and get you to work through things too quickly or in the way i think would be best I might accidentally end up pushing you farther away. I’d rather you be overworking and/or emotionally distancing yourself in my orbit so I can be here for you when you come up for air.

I’m going to put the rest of this under the cut because i haven’t even gotten around to the point of your message lmfao (thank you so much for the ask btw !!!)

However! The crux of the issue is that, for all of their similarities and potential compatibilities, Tony and Natasha first met when Tony was dying (stressful in its own right but in Tony’s case, it specifically ties directly back to the aforementioned medical trauma + previous near-death experiences) and Natasha was undercover on behalf of SHIELD collecting intel on him for a superhero initiative that he did not know anything about and did not know he was being considered for. They don’t really get the chance to engage and interact in good faith because of the inherent nature of “Natalie’s” mission, but I think that the sources for potential long-term mistrust go a bit deeper than that superficial subterfuge.

Natasha in this situation is manipulating tony to gather information on him and denying him full control over medical decisions, and he is not privy to this prolonged, imbalanced dynamic until much later. Plus, Natasha’s own assessment of Tony is that he is not fit for the Avengers, but that Iron Man is. I feel this could be interpreted by Tony as Natasha suggesting that SHIELD reassign someone else to pilot the suit, further digging into those previous harmful thought patterns for tony that he’s only as worthy as the weaponrymachines he builds, no one values or wants him as he is, people are going to force him to relinquish his creations if he doesn’t give them up voluntarily and with a smile with the now added bonus of: this suit makes me feel like my life is worth living again and now they want to take it away from me because I’m not good enough for it.

As is, this setup makes total sense for their first meeting: Natasha is an agent and a damn good one and Tony is a very powerful man who people are regularly trying to pry information/resources/technology/expertise from by any means necessary.

The problem lies in the fact that these two are then tasked with being on an elite superhero squad where they have to place very complete trust in each other and I just don’t really see that happening without some intense heart-to-hearts about what went down in IM2. Now, as we stated before, these are two people who are very reluctant to open up and share their internal strife even with the few people they’ve developed trusting relationships with over the course of years, so I don’t imagine they would willingly offer that painful transparency to each other.

It seems that the ideal conditions for this sort of conversation to take place would call for a mission requiring only Tony and Natasha to work in an extremely close capacity with each other that involves high stakes and high emotions and in which the success of the mission lies critically in their ability to improvise off each other in order to hide in plain site using the cover of an innocuous personal entanglement.

I sense a fake dating mission!!!!!!!

(Bonus points if the context of the mission harkens back to the one or both of their previous traumas.)

So, to FINALLY get around to the point of your ask, my ideal tonynat fake dating mission would serve the primary purpose of allowing tony and nat to work through the events of IM2 and develop their friendship. This would have to involve recognizing the many similarities they share regarding their motivation to undo the violence and harm that they both wrought in their previous lives and then using that foundation of recognition to build trust and eventually camaraderie and understanding!

And because this is my personal dream tonynat fake dating mission story, the secondary purpose would be to make steve jealous and have an early-onset Feelings Realization™️and/or tony-induced Gay Awakening© because i have perpetual stevetony brain rot and I simply cannot engage with any story without figuring out a way to shove a stevetony plotline into it🤪

The time: the nebulous space after AI/IM3 but before CA:TWS.

The place: a foreign nation with a highly advanced technology sector (I’m thinking either Singapore or Japan or Germany).

The mission: identify and infiltrate a corporation that is suspected to be funneling technology and product to [INSERT VILLAIN ORGANIZATION HERE] [PROBABLY DOOM LOL].

I imagine it would start with Fury assembling the Avengers to brief them on the situation and the long and short of it is this: a weeks-long mission that will involve Tony and Natasha attending a technology expo abroad to figure out who is supplying [VILLAINS] with their tech, infiltrate their operations, gather intel, and collect evidence. There should be no reason to expect any flashy shootouts, Fury insists while leveling a one-eyed glare at Tony, but Clint and Steve will rotate 4 day surveillance shifts on the helicarrier which will be hovering nearby over international waters and Bruce and Thor will be on call in case they do need back-up.

One last thing: undercover identities. Trying to conceal Tony Stark’s identity would be like trying to sweep an elephant under a carpet–Hill has to talk quickly to cut Tony off from reminding them all again how he managed to stay under the radar in Tennessee for a week and if it’s so damn hard for him to go undercover then how come the powers that be at SHIELD couldn’t find him in Buttfuck Nowhere, USA?–but it doesn’t matter because he’ll be able to blend in effortlessly at this conference under the guise of exploring new opportunities for SI to diversify its ventures in the tech sector.

Natasha, on the other hand, will need something a bit more involved. She’ll be attending as Nadine Roman, an aspiring model and Stark’s latest conquest, Fury explains while Hill drops a file detailing the persona in front of Natasha.

At this, the energy in the room shifts a bit as Steve, Bruce, and Tony all have subtle, but undeniable reactions to this news. Bruce frowns slightly, as if trying to imagine what this scenario would even look like. Tony’s eyes slip over to Steve and his smirk falls for just a moment before snapping back into place, albeit looking a little bit more forced than before. As Steve tries to clumsily disguise his own surprised expression, he remembers seeing a story in the news recently about Tony and Pepper’s split as he had been flipping between the international news section and sports.

“So…I’m going to fake date Triple Imposter over there?” Tony finally offers into the silence.

Fury considers him for a second, and is just opening his mouth to respond when Natasha–still studying her file to get the rundown on ‘Nadine’–says “Yeah, if you can handle it,” eliciting an unapologetic snort from Clint where he sits beside her.

Cut to the actual mission, and by all appearances ‘Nadine’ and Tony are technically pulling it off with no issues. Not like it’s hard, really, Red is a literal pro at undercover operations as Tony is quite well aware of having been on the receiving end of one of them. She slips into the role of harmless arm candy flawlessly, batting her eyes and smiling coyly over her bare shoulders at egotistical corporate executives with an almost surgical precision. Her flirting and the prestige that accompanies her temporary status as Tony Stark’s companion gains her access to secret meetings and lowly-lit offices where she fades into the background, making herself known and forgotten with equal efficacy.

For his part, Tony is providing the perfect cover for Natasha to work off of. He parades her around the first day, every bit his ostentatious self to make sure everyone gets the image of her on his arm cemented in their minds. He pretends to be too tipsy to notice when his date seduces men right behind him while skillfully avoiding the drinks that keep getting shoved into his hands. He schmoozes with global industry leaders who make him want to tense his body in disgust, but he forces himself to relax, fielding unwanted touches and unearned familiarity all while trying to pry information out using his own forms of deception and sleight of hand.

It’s strange Tony thinks playing this game again. It hasn’t been all that many years since this was his real life, though it feels like it’s been lifetimes. Considering how many near-death scares he’s had in the past few years, it may as well have been several lifetimes since the last time he’s flounced around one of these conferences with some nameless darling of the night on his arm and one too many drinks in his blood and a desperation to be outside of himself, even if just for a moment, even if he had to kill himself oh-so-slowly to do it.

Oh right.

In all the madness that’s been Iron Man, the ecstasy of building something to do good for a change coupled inextricably with the immense mental toll of his recent heroics, it had been easy to let himself forget what it had felt like to live with the shackles of a duller but more persistent type of misery around his neck.

It unnerves him, too, how easy it is to slip back into this life, but he supposes he had been born and built for it. It’s practically muscle memory or an instinct hardwired into his DNA, so deeply ingrained in him he couldn’t cut out the rot no matter how badly he might want to.

Tensions build as the days pass, until one day while Natasha is off trying to uncover potential industry connections to [VILLAIN ORGANIZATION], it happens. Tony’s in the middle of a conversation that he hates about the merits of private-sector civilian surveillance. But, because he’s Tony Stark and he’s smarter than all of these sleazy business fucks put together, he finds himself dominating the discussion. And, because he’s working this goddamn mission right now, undercover in plain site, he’s arguing for it. Arguing the merits of private sector civilian surveillance.

He finishes the point he was making, met with painfully unsubtle nods of approval and he can practically see the rusty gears in the brains of his so-called contemporaries trying to figure out how quickly they can relay what Tony’s just said to their own company boards.

He knows he’s lived this exact scene at least a hundred times before at no less than a few dozen past expos. He’s never been able to observe the charade so clearly before, though.

As he’s turning away from the crowd of executives surrounding him, Tony doesn’t register that instead of sipping at the glass of water he’s been nursing all night, he’s raised it to his lips and forcefully thrown his head back to drink until his brain realizes that the burn he expected to light a path down his throat hasn’t come yet.

Muscle memory. Just like all the worst parts of him, the parts he will never be without.

Horror dawns on him as he slowly lowers his arm, and the breaths start coming fast and shallow while the cold, cold weight of hysteria begins to settle in his chest, freezing him from the inside out.

I need a drink he thinks for the first time in a long time, and that… That scares him. Because he could do it, it would be all too easy to start again here, now. Someone would no doubt be thrusting another drink innocuously into his hands soon enough because of course they would, he’s Tony Stark and Tony Goddamn Stark is a drunk. Ever since that first drink in the dark of Howard’s office when bourbon branded his mouth with its awful liquid fire and his father branded his soul with a taunt Tony never stopped repeating Stark men are made of iron Stark men are made of iron Stark men are made of iron.

The next few seconds seem to collapse and stretch simultaneously around Tony as if he has suddenly found himself suspended in the middle of a black hole. There’s a slight tremor to his hand as he sets the now empty glass down. The conversation is still moving around him: attention snaps back to him and predatory smiles greet him in excess before he’s even finished turning to face them again. A thought passes through the haze in his oxygen-starved brain that he’s about to be eaten alive, consumed whole and used up so thoroughly that there will be nothing left. It’s so asinine that for a brief instant mounting distress gives way to sharp disgust at the momentary lapse of rationality.

A light hand settles on his shoulder, and Tony’s entire body tenses under the phantom weight of a much heavier grip. Someone else used to know how to spot the onset of his little outbursts once. A friend, a desperately trusted father figure, or so he had deluded himself into thinking once because he had wanted that, had wanted anyone to notice when he was trapping himself inside his own brain again and maybe even to care enough to bring him back down to earth when he did.

Panic seizes Tony’s heart in an iron grip, and it feels like Obie’s hands inside him.

Natasha looks up at him, but he doesn’t catch the expression on her face, eyes zeroing in on the spot where he had just set his empty cup down. On the table, someone has helpfully cleared the glass and set down a complimentary martini on the corner of a napkin.

It’s all a blur of a crashing martini glass and his own breath and blood loud in his ears and his body on autopilot getting him the hell out of there because yes, yes this is bad but if he doesn’t leave now it’s going to be worse. Vodka drips down his hand as he practically runs out of the hall back to the refuge of their hotel suite and he hasn’t even thought about the consequences, the damage control until he hears Natasha’s voice light and unbothered and a second later a round of raucous laughter from the crowd he’d just had eating out of the palm of his hand and then the door slams shut behind him and all he thinks about is the path back to the hotel.

When Natasha slips into their rooms later that night, Tony doesn’t waste any time deploying his own damage control strategy, but not so he can manage appearances in front of the men waiting to pounce on him once more on the expo floor. He can’t really bring himself to care less about keeping up appearances with them, and it won’t matter after tonight, anyway.

“I’m going back to the helicarrier. I’ll be much more useful there running surveillance and the suit is always available in case you need it.”

Natasha tilts her head and raises one eyebrow pointedly as she silently considers Tony’s words for a moment.

“No.” She says firmly, with a tone that would have ended the discussion before it even began were she not talking to a man whose stubbornness was outmatched only by the magnitude of his lack of self-preservation.

“Excuse me?” There’s just the slightest edge of panic to Tony’s voice, but even that small crack is threatening to collapse the entire facade.

“I need you here. There’s no other part of this mission where you’d be more useful.”

“That really isn’t your call to make,” Tony says brusquely, getting up from where he had been sitting in their lounge and walking over to face the view of the nighttime city skyline as it shines through the massive windows.

“It’s not yours either. I wouldn’t have taken this mission if I didn’t know you could do it, Stark.”

“Why?!” Tony bursts out, expression crumbled when he spins around to meet her head-on. “What changed Natasha? Two years ago, YOU said I was a liability, so what exactly has changed?” His chest is heaving with the effort of catching a breath, eyes wild and body frozen still against the backdrop of the city lights, held captive under Natasha’s assessing gaze in a way that’s so much more restricting than even the bounds of social convention he broke to escape the expo floor an hour ago.

For a few, awful seconds, Natasha’s face is totally blank as she stares back at Tony and he wonders desperately for a moment if she’s evaluating him in real-time, if she’s writing the mission debrief in her head right now about how Tony Stark has shown himself unfit for espionage, unfit for combat, unfit for superheroics, unworthy of so much more than just the Iron Man su—

“I did.” Her voice shatters the spiral he had just begun to fall into, sympathy written in the downward tilt of her mouth and the way her eyebrows draw towards each other, wrinkling the skin between them. Tony is so abruptly, acutely aware that this is an emotion she’s choosing to let him see, but unlike the way she had laughed airily at the jokes made by the businessmen at the conference downstairs or their first interactions together when she had still been Natalie, this is not an act. The masks have all dropped.

“What?”

“ I changed. I made the wrong call about you.” She slowly makes her way over to him.

Tony breathes out an incredulous laugh, one hand coming up to rub his face. “You’re really going to try and convince me that I’m not everything you wrote in your report to Fury? After what you saw down there?” The words are quiet in the still air between them.

“What did I see? Tell me why I was right.” She raises one hand to lower his from his face, not letting it go once she does.

“Isn’t it obvious? This… all the— the schmoozing and the grandstanding and the— God, the weapons. It’s like I never even left the industry, it all comes back so easily. That’s who I am, who I was raised to be. You saw it down there, I know you did. Please don’t— don’t lie to me.” He swallows heavily around the last admission, the unspoken again echoing louder than if he had just said it.

“I don’t know,” Natasha starts, a small smile forming on her gorgeous red-painted lips. The shade matches the color of the tie Tony wore today. She had hidden a microphone in the knot before they left earlier this afternoon. “Doesn’t seem like it comes all that easily to you. I imagine we’d still be down there schmoozing and grandstanding together if it did.”

A beat of silence passes before Tony breaks into a startled grin, Natasha’s smile growing in response to his. “I always forget that making jokes is something you do,” he admits, chuckling softly.

“Looks like we’ve still got a lot to learn about each other then.”

“Guess so,” the words just shy of a whisper as he finally pulls his hand from Natasha’s gentle hold and breaks their gaze to look away.

“Tony,” she says, resting one hand on his cheek to gently guide him back. “The man on this mission? That isn’t you. Maybe it was, once, but I know it isn’t now because I see you choose to be better than him every day. To do better than him. That’s who you are: the choice you make, over and over, every day, to be better.” Her eyes flicker away for just a fraction of a second, almost imperceptibly, if Tony hadn’t been hanging on to her every word, eyes fixed on hers. “And I… I wouldn’t hold yourself responsible for the person you were raised to be.”

He takes in a shuddering breath, unsure how he found himself here without any of his social armor. How Natasha disarmed him of his usual tactics, avoidance and distraction and redirection, he isn’t quite sure. But there’s a trust he feels blossoming in his chest as she cradles his head in her hand that pushes fear at bay, and he knows he should be wary, trusting the spy, but there’s a haunted edge to her expression that makes Tony think that, for once, perhaps he isn’t the one who stands to lose the most if he falls headlong into trusting.

“It’s too much,” he admits, “pretending to be who I was. It— it reminds me of Obie, and drinking, and… it’s just a lot. A lot to deal with alone.”

The corners of her eyes wrinkle tenderly as she smiles warmly at him. “It’s an act, Tony. You know this. You’re the only person who can do it, exactly because you’ve done it before, for so long. You fooled me didn’t you?”

His lips quirk up at the quip, he imagines that he’ll never quite get over how bizarre it is to hear Natasha banter with him like this, but it doesn’t much matter as long as he gets to experience the delight of her humor again.

“And Tony?”

“Yes?”

“I promise you, you’re not alone anymore.”

—

as far as the steve b-plot goes i’m thinking that steve would initially be feeling a sort of vague discomfort that he can’t quite pin down a reason for so he eventually just decides ‘oh you know what Nat is right and i’m probably feeling lonely and should try dating again after this mission is over’. but then he starts to see tony and nat acting more and more comfortable and affectionate and intimate with each other during the expo in a way that feels…. not so fake anymore and discomfort intensifies into a weird sort of frustration and anger and ultimately he realizes it’s jealousy and he spends a few days stewing in the helicarrier watching tony dazzle natasha in front of god and probably some villains and everyone else on the expo floor and he’s like this is so weird am i jealous of tony?? I don’t like nat like that she’s a great friend but i only see her as a friend and then one day on the ninth day of his latest shift because he’s started insisting to clint that he extend his rotations (clint is very on board with this bc as far as missions go this is literally a cakewalk to him & Nat and he promptly peaces out to go raise his secret family) steve’s watching the surveillance footage of the expo and he sees tony laughing so genuinely as he and natasha demonstrate an iron man gauntlet and he’s so enamored by tony’s joy and the way he squeezes his eyes shut and presses his lips together into a smile because he physically can’t contain his amusement and his laugh lines deepen so beautifully and he’s like oh. OH. i’m not jealous of tony i’m jealous of NATASHA. Because she gets to make tony laugh like that and touch him and be his and it’s all for a mission of course it is but what if it isn’t?? Because steve’s never seen tony laugh like that before and that was all for natasha and cue steve-centric shenanigans as he works through his gay pining for tony stark while simultaneously convincing himself that tony and natasha are now in a real relationship and angsting over that too. i feel like this would eventually resolve itself by nat and tony somehow getting themselves in danger as they finally hone in on their target and steve has to go save them and he’s carrying a bruised and bloodied tony stark out of his makeshift prison and tony is so delirious with gratitude that he kisses steve and steve feels guilty about THAT bc even though he’s elated he’s like ‘oh naur :( tony is cheating on my best close friend natasha with me and how could i do this to her’ meanwhile natasha is completely oblivious to this whole pity party steve is throwing himself and tony has literally been asleep in a hospital bed for 17 hours and thinks he dreamed that kiss when he wakes up steve thinks he’s in a love triangle but it’s literally all in his head bc he’s an emotionally constipated idiot but damn it if he isn’t tony’s emotionally constipated idiot

#if it's all the same to you i'm going to hang on to your 1872 ask a bit longer :)#signed sealed delivered #meidui #tony stark #natasha romanoff #mcu #meta #fic!#evwrites #scribbles #tonynat #plus a dash of #stevetony #bc it's me and of course there's stevetony

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