(Barely) Controlled Chaos #1

(Barely) Controlled Chaos #1

So, this is part one of the first installment in the I Choose You 'verse.  (Barely) Controlled Chaos will be from Tony's pov, contains lots of angst, some humour, many many swear words and descriptions of torture and sexual scenes - nothing too explicit, and nothing worse than shown in the films, but if you don't like that, this may not be for you.  The Iron Man 1 and 2 films will come into this, as will The Avengers, so if you don't like spoilers, check the warnings at the top of each section before reading.

Warnings for part 1: mentions of physical and mental abuse, mentions of alcoholism

Disclaimer: I own nothing.  Please don't sue me.

***

Tony was not allowed Pokémon.  His father was very clear on that fact.

His mother had one, an old Persian that she’d helped to raise when she was a teenager.  Tony didn’t know if her luminous silver fur was like that because she was close to 40 years old, or if she had been born that way, but it didn’t matter; she was still the most beautiful thing the six-year-old had ever seen.  He loved the cat because his mother loved it; sometimes he thought that she favoured the Pokémon over him, but that was alright, because sometimes Tony did too.  Tony did bad things, and his father shouted at him; Persian only ever got petted and given treats.  His mother was right to like the Good Girl more than the Bad Boy.

Persian was his mother’s constant companion; that was one thing that didn’t change as he grew older.  Tony became a prodigy, which made his father behave as if he loved him, at least in front of the cameras.  At home, Howard was too busy trying to beat his son’s genius that Tony was mostly treated with indifference and sometimes he was outright ignored.  By both his parents.  Tony wasn’t a cute little boy any more, and his mother seemed to lose interest in him more and more as he grew towards his teenage years.

He’d overheard his parents argue on more than one occasion, but never about him.  They didn’t care enough to argue about their son.  No, Persian was usually the topic of their arguments; Howard Stark was of the opinion that the house was no place for pets.  Maria always countered that with ‘Pokémon weren’t pets, they were friends’.  You couldn’t just pick a Pokémon up and take it home with you; it had to choose to be with you.  These arguments were ultimately circular and ended up with both his parents drunk while Tony tried to get close enough to Persian to pet her.  The cat didn’t like Tony very much, and he was yet to get in stroking range, but he held out hope.  Pokémon have to like you to stay with you; Tony’s parents didn’t like him, but Tony thought that maybe, if he was very nice to Persian, she might like him one day.

Then the Pokémon died, and Tony’s stable-ish family life went to hell.

Without her companion, Maria became depressed, and more than once Tony had returned home from school to find her unconscious in her own vomit.  He took care to never mention these incidents to his father, who drank just as much, but handled it better.  Or worse, depending on your point of view.  Locking himself in his garage or office and passing out on a desk was not Tony’s idea of a good time.  By the time Tony turned fifteen, the only member of his family he actually liked was Jarvis, the butler, and he was technically a servant.

All in all, when his school finally got sick of him and let him take his exams early, he was ecstatic for a chance to get out of the house.  MIT accepted him (who wouldn’t, with his grades?), he filled out all the paperwork himself – he put himself down for communal living arrangements, just because he knew Howard would hate it and he was feeling petty at the time – and then he was out of there.

He grew to regret his hasty decision.

Not about MIT – that was awesome, even if he did know more about his classes than most of the Professors – but about the dorm living.  His accommodation was a small room on a corridor, sharing a communal bathroom and kitchen.  At first, he thought it would be fun – sure, it was a step down from what he was used to, but he was paying for it with his trust fund and he knew that Howard wouldn’t shell out for these living arrangements, so he wanted to stretch his budget.  He was a few years younger than the other students, but that wouldn’t matter.

Except it did.

His dorm-mates were four other boys – men really, given their age – and they sneered at him when he tried to introduce himself.

“What do they think they’re doing, letting a kid in here?” was the nicest greeting he got.  Tony assumed they doubted his right to be there and promptly aced every test put before him, in one case getting a better mark than two of his dorm-mates put together.  They didn’t take it well.

As Tony was expecting, Howard threw a fit when he found out where his son was living (it took almost six weeks, and Tony thought that maybe his parents had only just noticed that he was no longer living in the mansion), but as Tony was paying himself there wasn’t much he could do about it.  He made vague comments about Tony learning his lesson and coming back for help before slamming the phone down.  Tony was almost vibrating with rage; when had his father ever given him anything, except a black eye that one time when he’d gotten very drunk and Tony had said something sarcastic?  Howard had apologised when he sobered up – the only ‘sorry’ he’d ever given anyone, Tony thought – and it had never happened again.  That didn’t mean that Tony forgave the old bastard.  Help, indeed.  Everything Tony had, he’d gotten on his own.  Sure, the money was Howard’s, but the brains and ambition were Tony’s, and he would not let his father belittle that.

That was when Tony decided that, no matter how bad his dorm-mates were, he was sticking it out.  He would not prove his father right.

Thinking back, that was probably where his stupid stubborn streak really kicked in.

This is so confusing I am too tired to figure it out but here I am, going to bed now. x

Selpa!  I'm so going to call you this now.  I love that you got tumblr!  xxx

Checklist for character development.

Created by myself, compiled from questions gleaned from several sources, and some of my own additions.

Odd Things To Happen At Work #5

It's my birthday, but I was scheduled to work tonight, so I wore a big badge on my shirt that said 'Birthday Girl', because if I have to work on my birthday, I'm going to milk it for all it's worth.

A woman saw my badge, and yelled at my manager for making me work on my birthday.  I was simulataneously very amused by his expression - and repetitve 'she didn't tell me!' that the woman didn't listen to - and concerned that he would be genuinely annoyed.  Luckily for me, he took revenge by stealing drinks I had made for his own customers, making me do them all twice.  I can deal with that.

As I was leaving, he told me to tell him next time it's my birthday.  I get the feeling that I'll never need to book it off again; he's going to give it me off whether I want him to or not.

I'm ok with that.

(Barely) Controlled Chaos #4

Part number 4 is up :)

Warnings for this part: none

November 1991, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Two months into life at MIT, and Tony was finally settling in.  His dorm-mates still pretended he didn’t exist, unless they were busy stealing his stuff because ‘he’s the rich guy’s kid; he can afford it’, but his professors had acclimatised to the idea that their youngest student was more proficient in most of their areas of expertise than they were, and everyone in the robotics lab was in awe of him.  He was no longer invisible to everyone, and that was a hell of a step up from his home life; he was almost sociable, and that was not a word that anyone had ever attributed to him.  Tony didn’t do social well.

Maybe that was why he still didn’t have any friends.  Tony was used to being ignored by humans, but now he was out of his father’s house, he had planned on breaking Howard’s principal rule and finding a Pokémon to keep him company.  All of his dorm-mates had Pokémon, and several people in his classes had their Pokémon escort them.  One of the professors had a Teddiursa who sat on the desk at the front of the lecture hall and made the least threatening growling noises Tony had ever heard at anybody who walked in late.  Tony was certain that several of the girls were late on purpose, just so they could coo at the little bear.

So, yeah, it was fair to say that Tony had anticipated finding a Pokémon that could stand his company.  From what he could tell, the creatures tended not to care what a person’s IQ was, or how old they were; if they liked you, they stayed with you, and Tony wanted that.

There were several wild Pokémon around campus as well as the ones following various students and lecturers around; mostly they were bird-types, but the odd Rattata could be found in dark corners and sometimes Sentret wandered onto the grounds.  Tony had hoped that, maybe, one of them would take a shine to him, and he made a habit of sitting on a bench in an area where a lot of the Pokémon congregated, throwing crumbs to the birds so that they would hop close to him.  They took the food, but none ever seemed interested in the person feeding them.

Maybe Howard was right, and he’d have to buy his friends.  He should just give up and go buy a dog.

One more day.  He’d try for one more day.  The pet store would still be there in the morning.

***

Tony was – once again – sitting alone on one of the benches scattered around campus, eating the remains of last night’s pizza for lunch and throwing crumbs at the birds that gathered around him.  Two of his dorm-mates walked passed without looking at him, let alone offering to join him.  He sighed and threw the crust onto the ground, where two Pidgey started fighting over it.  One more day.  It had become a mantra by now.  One more day.  One more…

“You shouldn’t encourage them.”

Tony jerked and turned to see who had spoken; behind him stood a tall black student that he remembered seeing around campus.  Seeing that he wasn’t about to be punched (it hadn’t happened yet, but he thought it probably would at some point), Tony shrugged and turned back to the birds.

“Not doing any harm.”

The student was silent for a minute, then the bench to Tony’s left creaked and he was sitting there, holding out a hand.  “James Rhodes.”

Tony blinked and took the hand slowly, waiting for the punch line.  He was the youngest, smartest person at this university, and that meant apparently that nobody talked to him.  Well, no one except the grad students in the robotics lab, who were constantly asking for his advice, and that was a recent development.  It wasn’t until they’d seen Dummy that any of them took him the slightest bit seriously.  That, at least, had gone according to plan.

So, this?  Unprecedented.  Tony’s mind flicked back to his last conversation with Howard, and he flinched.  This Rhodes character wanted something.

“What do you want?” he asked, because he was sick of people in general and had no patience for any more games at his expense.  Rhodes blinked and let go of Tony’s hand.

“…To talk to you?”  he said, uncertainly.  Tony snorted and tore the corner off his pizza, throwing it and watching as a Taillow caught it in mid-air.

“So talk.”

There was a beat of silence, then Rhodes spoke again, judgement in his tone.  “You’re not very friendly.”

“Neither is anyone else,” Tony said, brutally honest as he watched the blue Pokémon dive and twist in the air, waiting for more food.  “Get used to it.”

Rhodes sighed and reached into a bag at his feet, pulling a sandwich out of it and peeling off the crusts.  He threw them to the Taillow, who caught them and took off into a nearby tree to eat them.  Tony sighed and threw the last of his food to the bickering Pidgey.

“I’m Tony.  Stark.”

Rhodes smiled at him.

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