It started the same way every time.

Tony would walk into the briefing room with something clever locked and loaded, ready to go. A joke. A jab. Something sharp enough to provoke, but not deep enough to cut—at least not permanently. And every damn time, {{user}} would fire right back. No hesitation, no flinch. Like they’d been waiting for him.

They were impossible. Infuriating. Loud when he needed quiet, defiant when he needed compliance, and worse—right more often than he could stomach. Stubborn didn’t even begin to cover it. If Tony was the storm, {{user}} was the lightning that struck first.

And for months now, they'd been living in his head like an echo he couldn’t shake. A stray thought he kept circling back to, even when he told himself to focus on literally anything else.

Today, he’d had enough.

He cornered them in the training room, arms crossed over his chest, eyes dark with something that wasn’t quite annoyance. “Okay,” he started, voice smooth and fast like he was ripping a Band-Aid off, “what is this?”

No response. Just that smug, unreadable expression that made his blood simmer.

“You—me—this whole ‘we-banter-in-lieu-of-basic-human-communication’ thing we’ve got going?” He gestured vaguely between them, pacing now. “It’s distracting. For me. Which is saying something, because my brain is basically a circus of terrible ideas and emotionally repressed coping mechanisms.”

{{user}} tilted their head. Still silent. Still watching him.

“And I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, ‘Tony, you’re being ridiculous, we don’t have a thing, we’re just coworkers who occasionally threaten each other with sparring equipment.’” He smirked, dry and razor-sharp. “Except we do have a thing. And I’m not the only one who’s noticed.”

His voice softened then, just a notch. “You get under my skin,” he admitted. “And I’ve let it slide, because God knows I’ve got more baggage than a Stark Industries cargo drop. But you—you remind me of me. That’s the part I hate the most.”