Stark Towerette, Sunday Evening

[ifwebeworthy]

Don was a surgeon from New York City who used to live in Tony Stark's house. Of course he couldn't cook. He could, however, order takeout with the best of them. He hadn't had Kung Pao chicken since before he died, so he'd fired off a text to his fellow tower-dwelling Avengers, as he might have in days of yore, asking if they wanted anything while he was ordering, and after waiting an appropriate amount of time for any requests to come in he'd called Ching Tai to place his order...with some last-minute requests by Thor.

"Oh, and a triple order of Mongolian beef and a double order of pork fried rice. Mm-hmm. And double the spring rolls. Are you sure? They're never as good reheated...what's an 'air fryer?'"

While Don waited on the delivery person, he would be in the kitchen getting educated on modern technology by a ghost. You know, just normal things.

Comments

[heroic_jawline]

"Chinese food?" Steve asked hopefully, coming into the kitchen.

[ifwebeworthy]

"Should be here any minute," Don told him as he looked up from his examination of the air fryer. A whole new way to reheat things was exciting! "Sorry, I was going to go down to get it but I got distracted."

[heroic_jawline]

"No need to apologize," Steve said. "I brought beer?"

Incredibly overpriced beer because Tony ordered it, but still! Beer!

[ifwebeworthy]

"Oh, good," Don said. "You can't have Chinese without beer. That's science."

[heroic_jawline]

"Exactly," Steve agreed, putting the beers down on the counter. "Ching Tai is good Chinese, too. Their spare ribs are swell."

[ifwebeworthy]

"Yeah? I know what Thor will be ordering next time, then."

[heroic_jawline]

"JARVIS has Tony and my normal order in his files," Steve said with a smile. "Feel free to add your and Thor's orders to it."

Ching Tai would be thrilled. So many eggrolls.

[ifwebeworthy]

Maybe that was why they kept delivering so much extra food to the dorms. They were confused about what a normal order looked like. "Yeah, about that," Don said. "I keep meaning to ask why JARVIS is a computer?"

Unspoken went that he was scared enough of the answer to not ask Tony.

[heroic_jawline]

"Instead of Vision, you mean?" Steve asked.

[ifwebeworthy]

"Why the hell would Tony's butler be Vision?" That didn't even make any sense, Steve.

[heroic_jawline]

Maybe they needed those beers before the food showed up. "In my version, Tony put JARVIS into a human body and Thor brought him to life with Mjølnir. He has a yellow stone in his forehead and goes by Vision now. Tony's new AI is called FRIDAY there."

Very normal, Don. Very. Normal.

[ifwebeworthy]

"In my universe Vision was an android Ultron built who then, as all sufficiently advanced technology seems to do sooner or later, turned on his creator. And Jarvis is Tony's butler." Who was human and thus didn't need to be put into a human body and brought to life with Mjolnir, wtf. "And I don't think Mjolnir could do that."

A pause, in which Don was clearly listening to something.

"Well, yeah, the Odinforce...so maybe?"

[heroic_jawline]

"I wasn't read in on all the details on how Vision came to life," Steve said a little dryly. "Vision can hold the hammer, too. Thor looked gobsmacked at that."

[ifwebeworthy]

"No," Don said without a moment's hesitation.

"I mean, no disrespect to Vizh, but where I'm from very few people are worthy of Mjolnir, and he's not one of them." A sizable chunk of the list was standing in this room, in fact, although Don was unsure if he counted, all things considered.

[heroic_jawline]

Steve laughed a little ruefully. "We all tried one night after a party. None of us were worthy."

[ifwebeworthy]

Liar.

"Steve," Don started in tones of, 'Come on, buddy,' but he was interrupted by a chime on his phone. "Oh, the food's here."

Saved by the bell, Rogers.

[heroic_jawline]

Steve grinned. "Food!" he said happily. "So JARVIS isn't a computer butler where you come from?"

[ifwebeworthy]

"No, he's a butler butler," Don said as he went to the door to collect the food. "You know, with the suit and all that? His first name is Edwin."

[heroic_jawline]

Steve smiled. "I'll have to ask Tony if that sounds familiar," he said. "This Tony, at least. The other one's not answering my calls right now."

And only half because no one calls a phone these days.

[ifwebeworthy]

That sounded...alarming. "He's not?"

Please say it was because you married a different version of him and broke his heart, Steve.

[heroic_jawline]

"I gave him some bad news a few weeks ago," Steve said. "He's...processing."

[ifwebeworthy]

Don took a moment to process that himself as he collected the food and sent the delivery guy on his way. With his lack of super-soldier muscle, it must be said that he was probably the wrong person in this room to be carrying this order, but he wasn't about to complain. "Well," he said once he'd set the bags safely on the counter. "I have to say I've never known Tony in my universe to take bad news well."

More like 'extremely overdramatically.'

[heroic_jawline]

"That seems to be true across Tonys, unfortunately. I'm giving him another week, then he needs to get over it."

And that's the kind of soft touch that led to Tony hanging up on him. A lot.

[ifwebeworthy]

As Don started unpacking and sorting the food, he told Steve, "Thor volunteers to punch him in the face, if you think that would help." It would make Thor feel better, at least, even if it was the wrong Tony Stark. "Pretty sure these are your short ribs."

[heroic_jawline]

"I don't think it needs to come to that," Steve said, smiling and taking the short ribs. "He'll come around."

[ifwebeworthy]

"I...wouldn't be so sure about that," Don said, thinking about the general state of affairs in his home universe. "Sometimes he gets dug into a position and he won't move because that would mean admitting he was wrong." And admitting he was wrong would mean admitting that whatever batshit mad science thing he'd done in advancement of that position wasn't worth it. "Or the one in my universe does."

Steve was probably going to notice at some point that Don didn't use the grammatical shorthand of 'my' when referring to his home universe's Tony Stark in particular. Reed Richards and Hank Pym were also on the list of people who didn't get that honor, but they were much less likely to come up in conversation, so...

[heroic_jawline]

Steve smiled a little ruefully. "I've definitely seen that stubborn side of him."

Ultron.

"But I can be stubborn too."

Behold! The other half of the problem!

[ifwebeworthy]

You weren't wrong! But also you were dead back home and hadn't cloned any of your dead friends before dying, so you got a free pass as far as Don was concerned.

"Isn't that the truth? Speaking of Tonys, will the local one be joining us? Or should I assume the lab has swallowed him whole and we'll get him back when we get him back?" Or had he started to walk in at an awkward point in this conversation and just backed out of the room quietly?

[heroic_jawline]

Steve chuckled. "You do know Tony. He hasn't been down there very long, but we can probably lure him out with Chinese food?"