The rain in Manhattan was relentless, washing down the glass exterior of the Avengers Tower like a endless waterfall.
Up on the 82nd floor—inside Tony Stark’s private penthouse lounge—the ambient lighting was soft, warm, and distinctly expensive. Smooth jazz was playing through hidden ceiling speakers, and the air smelled like mahogany, top-shelf bourbon, and clean ozone.
Natasha Romanoff sat at the sleek granite bar, her legs crossed, calmly adjusting the tactical wrist-jack on her Widow’s Bites. She was wearing a high-necked black cashmere sweater, looking completely relaxed, completely dangerous, and completely unimpressed by the lunatic leaning over the bar beside her.
Jack had a half-drained bottle of 1942 Don Julio in his good hand, his dark coat thrown haphazardly over a two-hundred-thousand-dollar Italian leather sofa. His grey thermal shirt was unbuttoned halfway down, showing off fresh, sloppy yellow iodide stains around his bandages.
"You know, Red..." Jack rasped, spinning the heavy crystal glass between his fingers until the ice cubes rattled like teeth. "...I was thinking. You and me? We got dynamic. We got chemistry. It’s like... Fire and Ice. Or The Beauty and the Psychopath. Tell me you don't feel the spark."
Natasha didn't even stop adjusting her wrist-jack. Click. Snap.
"The only spark you’re gonna feel, Jack, is twenty thousand volts from my gauntlet straight into your left kidney," she said, her voice smooth as silk and cold as a Siberian winter.
"Ooh, direct targeted electrical therapy!" Jack gasped, taking a long, wet swig straight from the bottle, wiping his mouth with the back of his dirty sleeve. "My favorite! See? You care about my rehabilitation! That’s so sweet. I knew under that icy Red Room exterior beats the heart of a true, romantic softie."
"I don't have a soft heart, Jack," Natasha murmured, finally looking up. Her steel-grey eyes locked onto his wide, bloodshot ones. "I have a very long list of people who thought they could push my buttons. Most of them are buried under unmarked pavement in Bucharest."
"Bucharest?" Jack leaned in real close, his grinning face barely three inches from her ear, smelling like tequila and pure unfiltered insanity. "Sounds cozy! We should do a weekend getaway! Just you, me, a stolen getaway car, and a couple of hand grenades. Dare to dream, Natty... dare to dream..."
"If you call me 'Natty' again," Natasha purred softly, her lips brushing right against his cheek as she leaned back, "I will cut off your tongue and feed it to Tony’s automated vacuum cleaner."
Jack’s mouth split into a wide, hysterical grin, his [10.8% SYNCHRONIZATION] buzzing like a high-voltage wire behind his eyes.
"God, I love it when you talk dirty," Jack cackled, letting out a raspy, dry hehehe into his glass.
Before Natasha could execute any of her twelve different lethal neck-snapping techniques, the heavy glass elevator doors at the end of the lounge hissed open with a slick, motorized WHOOSH.
Tony Stark stepped out.
He was wearing a charcoal three-piece suit, an unbuttoned collar, and his signature tint-shaded sunglasses despite being indoors at nine in the evening. He stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the scene in his private bar.
There was a half-dead guy in a filthy coat sitting on his Italian leather barstool, drinking his sixty-thousand-dollar vintage tequila directly out of the bottle, while Natasha Romanoff looked five seconds away from committing a federal homicide.
"Okay," Tony said, taking off his sunglasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. "FRIDAY, quick scan. Is this a burglar, a homeless guy who got lost on the elevator, or did Cap bring home another broken stray cat?"
[Scanning subject,] the smooth Irish AI voice echoed from the ceiling. [Subject possesses high levels of Pain Receptor Dissociation, irregular neural activity, and is currently consuming your 1942 Don Julio directly from the bottle. Estimated blood-alcohol content is... impressive.]
"Hey! Shell-head!" Jack yelled across the penthouse, waving the tequila bottle like a long-lost buddy at a tailgate party. "Nice place! A little sterile on the lighting, though! And your AI’s got no manners! She didn't even offer me crushed ice!"
Tony walked slowly toward the bar, his hands in his pockets, looking Jack up and down with deep, unadulterated skepticism.
"Nat," Tony said calmly. "Who is the human dumpster fire, and why is he touching my top-shelf liquor with unwashed hands?"
"His name is Jack," Natasha sighed, pouring herself a fresh finger of whiskey. "He ruined Wilson Fisk’s life on live television three days ago."
"Ah. The 'Demon' guy," Tony said, nodding once as he leaned against the opposite end of the bar. "Right. The guy who hijacked a news station with a microphone and a sandwich. I saw the footage. Very theatrical. Very 1990s Joker-lite. But here’s the thing, Jack-in-the-box... this is a private residence. The penthouse is off-limits to non-Avengers, unregistered vigilantes, and people who smell like a hospital waste bin."
Jack didn't get up. He just spun his barstool around, leaning his elbows back on the granite counter and grinning right at Tony Stark’s face.
"Tony, Tony, Tony..." Jack clicked his tongue, making a sad tsk-tsk-tsk sound. "So cold! So corporate! Where’s the hospitality? I thought billionaire playboys were supposed to be generous! You got three hundred iron suits downstairs and you can't even share a splash of agave with a wounded veteran of the Hell's Kitchen streets?"
"First of all," Tony raised a finger, "it’s not 'agave', it's an heirloom vintage bottled before you were born. Second of all, my suits are private property. And third... how did you even get past my sixty-million-dollar biometric security grid on the ground floor?"
Jack reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a small, bent silver fork he’d stolen from the noodles shop in Chinatown, and tossed it onto the bar counter. It landed with a sharp CLINK.
"Your elevator card reader on floor 81 has a exposed copper relay behind the plastic panel," Jack rasped, his wide eyes unblinking as he took another drink. "I jammed the fork into the circuit, shorted the ground wire, and your fancy Irish computer thought I was a senior technician named 'O'Malley'. Dare to build better security, Stark... DARE! HAHAHAHA!"
Tony stared at the silver fork on the bar. Then he looked up at the ceiling.
"FRIDAY."
[...I am currently updating the elevator circuitry protocols, boss,] FRIDAY replied, sounding remarkably embarrassed for a computer program. [And deleting 'Technician O'Malley' from the database.]
Natasha let out a quiet, rare snort into her whiskey glass.
Tony’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses as he looked back at Jack, who was now using a crystal cocktail stirrer to pick his teeth.
"You're a real pain in the ass, you know that, Jack?" Tony said, though a tiny, reluctant spark of amusement flickered in his eyes.
"I try, Tin Man," Jack cackled, leaning forward until his split-lipped face was inches from Tony's suit jacket. "I really do. Now... where do you keep the expensive scotch?"
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