Work Text:
Today was a great day as far Tony was concerned.
After being able to sleep in for once, he gone out for breakfast or early lunch, depending on how you looked at it. He did a little morning flight to test out the new armor. Then he’d found a small grove of ginkgo trees with the freshest tastiest leaves he could ever want in Central Park. He had the afternoon free to work on his latest coding projects and make some armor adjustments. Then there was the charity gala that night.
Never truly a day of rest for the world’s genius engineer billionaire superhero brachiosaurus.
Maybe Steve could come along with him for the gala. Steve always supported charities for veterans.
Tony sighed. He had a completely hopeless crush on the team’s spinosaurus. It could never work – Steve was just too perfect. Also a carnivore. Tony couldn’t figure out how to ask Steve out, much less find a place where they could go to eat should Steve even agree on a date.
He reached out for another mouthful of leaves and heard an unpleasant buzzing around his head. “What the hell?” He immediately ran a scan, then flipped up his helmet to get a closer view of what had to be Iron Man.
The Iron Man was looking right at him as he flew around Tony’s head. Right, those homo sapiens he’d met a couple of months ago mentioned that they had their version of the Avengers.
Why didn’t the multiverse incursion alarm go off? That’s a problem for later.
The HUD caught and translated the communications between the little Iron Man buzzing around and someone else called ‘Cap .’ Huh. Tony looked down and saw a small Captain America, also a homo sapiens, peering up at him.
Wow, the multiverse can be very weird.
“How can I help you?” Tony asked.
“We’re not on earth anymore, I take it,” the Iron Man said. “Wow, a dinosaur version of me.”
Tony nearly rolled his eyes. He wasn’t just any dinosaur. “You’re on a Earth, not your Earth. Do you know the Fantastic Four?”
“Richards and company? Wait –”
One very confusing conversation later and it turned out that this Iron Man was from a different earth than the Fantastic Four that Tony’s team had met earlier. “Returning you home will be a bit trickier but I have a portal now,” Tony offered.
Iron Man tipped up the face plate on his helmet and stared at Tony. “How can you —?” He stopped himself. “Great. A portal is just the thing. I have a beacon back to our home universe, like a trail of bread crumbs. I just managed to set it up in time when we suddenly pulled here.”
“Tony, that’s great!” the small Cap exclaimed.
For minute, Tony felt a sudden painful pang as the fondness and pride shone through Cap at his Iron Man’s beacon.
“Come back to the Tower,” Tony said.
Back in the workshop, Tony and Iron Man worked through the equations to set up the portal correctly. Tony glanced up to see his own Captain America waiting on the other side of the workshop doors. The little shimmy of his spines and the flick of his tail sent his heart soaring. The small Cap gave a thumb’s up sign to his Iron Man – ah, that had to be the same gesture as Steve’s spine shake. One had to make do if you didn’t have a tail, Tony assumed. Life must be difficult without them.
Soon enough, the Iron Man and his Cap were loaded up and ready to go home. Iron Man nodded to Tony to hit the button to send them on their way while his Captain America held his hand.
Tony nodded in return and hit the button and watching them disappear into the portal. Then he felt a sadness that his Cap didn’t feel the same about him. Then he looked up and saw the brightness in Steve’s face, much like the small Cap had when he looked at Tony. Maybe he did have a chance after all.
“Is everything okay, Tony?” Steve asked, after he walked into the lab.
Tony blurted out, “Where can we eat dinner? I can’t think of any restaurants —”
“There’s a couple of places for herbivores and carnivores,” Steve said, as if he already knew about restaurant options. “A couple of them would be good for, um, dates.”
“Well, let’s try one of them out,” Tony replied enthusiastically. “You know, for an actual date.”