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With a slight flicker, the footage started rolling, focusing as Tony Stark sat himself in a comfortable armchair in his workshop, a StarkPad in his hands as he grinned at the camera.“So, I’m doing this thing, it was Pepper’s idea, to write my autobiography. I told her it seemed kinda dumb, as I’m not dead yet, but here I am, so guess who won that argument.”A cultured British voice cut in. “I believe your multiple previous run-ins with death also had something to do with it, Sir.”“Nobody asked you, J. Anyway, she found this thing online, a bunch of questions to kind of guide you through the 'life story process' or whatever,” He wiggled his pointer fingers in the air to simulate air quotes, “And JARVIS has been going ballistic about it too.”“I have never gone ballistic in my life.”“Liar, you help me run the suit.” Tony was looking down at his StarkPad, swiping across the screen with a fingertip. “Writing with a pen and actual paper is not really my thing, neither is typing, so we're gonna do it this way, I do the talking thing really well. Okay, a lot of these are family questions, and since I’m not currently a drunk, we’re not gonna tackle that today. Let’s find an interesting one.” He kept swiping, his lips moving slightly as he read the questions to himself. “JARVIS, these all suck, what the hell, give me something more fun than this. Oh, here we go.” He held the StarkPad up higher and read out loud. “ 'Tell about a humorous experience you have had with your friends.' ” He grinned, something sly in his eyes as he looked back at the camera. “Wow, we could be here all day with that one. The stories I have about Rhodey and me at MIT could take hours. But…” Tony tapped his chin and gazed offscreen, thinking. “Ooh, okay, I have a good one, this involves most of my work friends.”He shifted on the chair, getting comfortable, and his eyes were sparkling with mirth as he began his story.“So, Bruce and I, Bruce Banner, Brucie-bear, he’s a genius and I love him, we have this scientist friend, Jane Foster. You may have heard of her, brilliant astrophysicist, she comes over to the Tower a lot for science sleepovers and whatnot, and yes, science sleepovers are totally a thing.” Tony was waving his hands and gesturing as he spoke, talking with his body as much as his mouth. “So Jane, she’s got this assistant, Darcy, that we’ve all taken a shine to. Sweet girl, very sassy, she fits right in. Anyway, on this particular occasion, Darcy’s boyfriend had cheated on her and she broke up with him, but he was holding her stuff hostage unless she agreed to talk with him and let him explain the situation. She flat-out refused to do so, we were very proud, that girl takes no shit.”At the edge of the camera frame, a slight movement was just visible, but it was impossible to make out what it was, hovering just on the edge.“She was talking to Jane about it this one morning, the Science Squad were all taking a break since we’d just blown something up in the lab, and Darcy was getting kinda teary and upset. All of us were hanging around, Steve and Bucky had just gone for a run, Clint was hogging the coffeepot, Natasha was handing Darcy tissues, and Thor ended up hugging her and patting her head. We had this kind of… silent conversation, I suppose you could call it, looking around at each other. We like Darcy, she’s our friend, and damn it, we’re the Avengers! We’re gonna go get her stuff for her! I figured, if nothing else, this was gonna make for an interesting story. It was also like ten in the morning and the girl had just hoovered half a quart of Espresso Chocolate Crunch ice cream, so nobody was about to say anything to upset her further.”A robot with a huge metal arm had very slowly moved further into the frame as Tony talked, and it reached out with a metal claw to very gently poke at his shoulder as he finished his sentence.“Oh, hey Dum-E.” He patted the robot’s metal arm. “So Jane gets Darcy calmed down, Natasha passes her more tissues, Thor gave her a squeeze that looked like it cracked a couple ribs, and Jane took her off to one of the guest rooms for a girl movie and some more ice cream. We waited until they were gone, and Steve just nodded and said, ‘Let’s go.’ ”Tony rolled his eyes in an affectionate way. “He loves breaking out his Captain voice, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. So we head out, and I can’t even begin to tell you how hilarious it was, arriving at this guy’s house. We were packed into this SUV like clowns at the circus, because we only took the one car, I have no idea why, and someone let Steve drive. Which was just stupid, he learned how to drive in Nazi Germany. Anyway, I want to preface this part of the story by saying I’m proud to let you know, the whole thing ended without violence.”Dum-E lowered his claw until it rested on the arm of the chair next to Tony’s elbow, and made a quiet beeping noise. Tony started stroking one of the metal support struts absentmindedly, prompting the bot to beep in a happy sort of way and wiggle a little closer.“So we’ve got me, you know who I am. And then we’ve got Natasha, this 5’2” ex-Russian assassin, Steve and Thor who are as close to giants as we get in this world, Clint who manages to look like an escaped gorilla when he’s not had enough coffee, and then Bucky. Bucky has about the most tragic backstory I've ever heard, but he looks like your average guy except that there’s something about him that is just unsettling. Really, really unsettling. Sadly, Brucie-bear stayed home, he said he had to work but I’m pretty sure he just didn’t want to get roped into whatever kind of shenanigans we were getting up to.”Tony shifted in his seat again, turning a bit sideways and tossing one leg over an arm of the chair, keeping up with his bot-petting. “We sent Natasha and Clint up first, figured there was no reason to pull out the big guns unless really necessary, and this guy answers and clearly doesn’t recognize them. He screams at them, and slams the door in their faces. The smile on Natasha’s face as she came back to the car chilled me to the bone, people. Absolutely terrifying. Steve and Thor went next, and they’re a little more recognizable, not to mention a lot bigger. Lo and behold, this guy is way more polite this time, but still said he wasn’t gonna let them in.”Dum-E rolled forward further, moving his claw into Tony’s lap to present a wider surface area for stroking.“You are so needy,” Tony chided, "This is why I'm letting JARVIS run the camera." But he looped his arm over the bot’s and continued his story, sprawled all over the armchair. “Finally, Bucky and I got out and joined them. I strolled up there, but Bucky, for some godforsaken reason, decides to climb the banister and perch there like Batman. I have no idea why, I didn’t ask and I'm sure the answer would have been creepy anyway.”Another bot trundled into frame on the other side, a very carefully balanced tray with a coffee mug on it gripped in its claw as Tony continued. “So this guy answers the door again, looks out at this moderately famous group of intimidating and threatening individuals, and also Bucky, and he just kinda goes pale. He grumps about it, then just stands back and throws his hands in the air and tells us to go take what we’re looking for. U, is that for me?”An affirmative beep and a slightly hazardous jiggle of the proffered tray, and Tony took the mug before any of the liquid sloshed out of it, sniffing at it before taking a careful sip. “Hey, you left the motor oil out this time, good job.” He glanced back at the camera. “Anyway, we go inside, we’re walking around gathering up whatever stuff we think is Darcy’s, and we’ve got a couple boxes for everything. Now, keep in mind, we are completely guessing at what stuff is hers. She didn’t know we were going over there, we didn’t have a list of her stuff.” He took another sip of his coffee and tucked the mug between his leg and the chair, patting the claw U stretched towards him. “Really, the only one being actually productive is Natasha, who is legitimately looking for stuff. I think she’s tossed more than one house in her time, she was very efficient. Thor and Steve, I still can’t believe this, were just randomly picking up furniture, flipping it over, and putting it back down. Just to show off, I guess, in case this guy wasn’t clueing in the fact that he’s outnumbered and he’s got literal Avengers in his house right now and we could break him if we wanted to.”Tony paused to chuckle, covering his face with his hand for a second. “Bucky was just… following the guy around, shadowing him in his own house. He just walked behind him, didn’t say anything, just being creepy. And you all know me, I’m going around causing general mischief. The dude really shouldn’t have been quite so broad in his invitation to take what I was looking for, because general mischief was it.” He paused, thinking, absentmindedly tapping his fingers on both bots as they crowded around him like eager puppies, jogging his foot slightly as it hung over the arm of the chair by U. “Oh, and Clint made himself a sandwich. He said it looked like we all had things under control and he’d always been a sucker for egg salad, so he stood over the sink in the kitchen and ate a sandwich while the rest of us were being... ridiculous, really. Start to finish, we were in and out of there in probably fifteen minutes.”“We got the boxes loaded up and headed back to the Tower, crammed back into that SUV, and carried the boxes up to the guest room. Darcy, Jane, and Bruce were watching Legally Blonde and eating chocolate at a pace I’m still impressed by, and I called Bruce a dirty, dirty liar for skiving off on our fun to watch Elle Woods kick ass. We told Darcy we went to see her ex, and her eyes just about bugged out of her head, it was hilarious. She asked us what we said to him, but we assured her we didn’t say anything. It was funny, Steve had his Jaw of Determination going on and he went all Captain Rogers and said, 'We aren’t messenger Avengers, we're delivery Avengers.' It was so dramatic, classic Cap.”Tony started laughing, the lines around his eyes and mouth deepening. The camera zoomed in on his face, catching all the nuances of his expression, the sparkle in his eyes and his inky eyelashes and the way his smile touched his entire face.“We put down the boxes, and Darcy went through the ones Natasha had worked on, and that was most of her stuff. Some clothes, movies, pink headphones, shoes, some juice out of the fridge that she knew Darcy liked. Reasonable things. Clint had stuck the rest of the container of egg salad in there, Steve and Thor hadn’t done much but overturn furniture, and Bucky was too busy creeping the guy out to grab anything. And then… she got to my box."He was grinning like a Cheshire Cat now, looking all sorts of pleased with himself as he looked into the camera. “She asked me what all of the crap was that I had in there, nothing that was hers. So I explained... I took the batteries out of the remote controls, his deodorant, the light bulb in the master closet and the bathroom, every pair of dress socks I could find, the laces out of his running shoes, and every single roll of toilet paper in the house.”Tony had to stop for a minute, laughing again, clearly enjoying the memory. “The others looked pretty impressed, and Darcy laughed so hard she started to cry, and she blubbered all over us while she gave us hugs and thanked us. We were standing around awkwardly, not a single one of us is good with emotions, and Thor was patting her head again while she cried. Finally Jane escorted her back to the sofa and we left. We kinda stood in the hall awkwardly for a minute, then Bucky just said out of nowhere, ‘So… tacos?’ And we all went and got tacos and churros.” Tony grinned and took another sip from his coffee, then resumed petting both of the bots. “It was a great day.”With a wistful smile, he looked off-camera again for a minute. “You know what, that was fun." Hauling himself around into a different position in the chair, cross-legged and leaning forward on his elbows, Tony's face was full of mischief. "Lemme tell you about the time during spring break when Rhodey and I completely disassembled and reassembled the dean’s car in the middle of his office for an April Fool’s prank...”