Saw in a reblog that you enjoy prompts and are still accepting them. I'm not sure if this is your cup of tea, but how about an alternate first meeting? No ideas for alternate first meetings? Have some extra tone ideas, fully optional, mix/match/discard to your tastes:

Extra idea one: At least one of them is a superhero. Maybe both are and one is trying to hide it due to hidden magic or secret identity AU.

Extra idea two: They're both pompous idiots geniuses think they're geniuses who don't get along immediately. Clashing egos.

Extra idea three: One or both are in some state of injury. If paired with two, people who don't get along during their first meeting while in a perilous situation is delicious and never an old trope.

Take any or nothing, no worries if nothing sparks. Best wishes!

This AU is comics inspired, but only in the sense of the set up where Tony Stark is the Avengers’ benefactor and no one knows that he’s Iron Man. Otherwise, it’s MCU in my brain.

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The best thing about Avengers galas was that Tony didn't have to go to them as ‘Tony Stark’. Iron Man got eager questions about battles instead of subtle angling for funding. Iron Man got admiration instead of digs at his personal history. He couldn’t drink with the faceplate down, but he didn’t need to drink to get through these things with the armor on. 

All of which made it enormously frustrating when the neurosurgeon he was currently chatting with—Doctor Strange, a hard name to forget—visibly deflated when he learned ‘Tony Stark’ wouldn’t be making an appearance. If Iron Man started having to field funding requests, Tony was going to scream. “I’ve never seen someone so disappointed to meet the hero instead of the money man,” he said.

Strange shot him a withering look. “You know damn well that Stark is a lot more than the money man, and your eagerness to frame him that way does you no favors.”

Shit, had he slipped? What did Strange know? “Stark funds the Avengers,” Tony said. “What else would you call him?”

“More of a hero than any of you,” Strange says, waving a hand to indicate the other Avengers. “Sure, he funds the Avengers. He also funds the new superhuman rehabilitation wing at the prison. And the foundation that helps neighborhoods rebuild after battles. He wrote software that responds to supervillain attack alerts and quarantines the user’s devices to prevent data loss and he gave it away for free.” Strange glanced over the heroes attending the gala and snorted. “Any one of the Avengers falls, they’ll be replaced by a new recruit in a week,” he said. “There’s no replacing Tony Stark.”

Tony could only stare as Strange turned and walked away.

No one had ever called Tony Stark a hero before.

I love the way you smell

ironstrange 😇

I couldn’t resist doing this as an A/B/O fic. I do love that trope, and scent is such a big part of it. 😀

This is not connected to my other A/B/O drabbles. It’s also not relevant which of them is the alpha and which is the omega in this particular scene. You may imagine them as you choose! 😀

-

Tony circulates through the crowd at the alpha/omega mixer more or less on autopilot. There isn’t a lot of turnover at high security mixers like this one; most of the people here know each other already. They keep coming because someone finds their match just barely often enough to give the rest of them hope. They’d all have better luck at a more publicly available event, but Tony had tried that once since becoming Iron Man and ended up needing the armor to get out again. 

Celebrity does have its downsides.

Finishing his drink, Tony is considering heading back to the bar when someone behind him says, “Excuse me.”

Turning, Tony smiles. “Stephen! Fancy seeing you here. Wizard Academy doesn’t run their own mixers?”

“Tony!” Stephen looks startled, for all that he was the one to address Tony first. “They do, but I thought I should branch out.” He pauses and then says, “I didn’t actually realize it was you until you turned around.”

“Then why—” Tony breaks off as realization dawns. They’ve only really interacted in professional settings until now, which means they were both politely wearing scent blockers. But tonight…

Stephen nods. “I caught your scent,” he says.

Tony’s heart rate kicks up a notch. “Would you like to double check?” he asks, gesturing at his throat. 

“Please.”

Tony lifts his chin in invitation and Stephen steps in close, leaning down until he can trail his nose delicately up the line of Tony’s throat toward his jaw. Tony shivers at the prickle of sensation and inhales deeply, catching a hint of Stephen’s scent as he does. It’s smokey, a little like incense, and Tony enjoys the thread of it, though he knows it’s only the top notes.

When Stephen pulls back his eyes are dark and his lips parted, like he’s still trying to pull in Tony’s scent. Silently, he tilts his head in invitation.

Up close, Stephen’s smokey scent takes on tones of honey and something else, something sharper. Tony finds his eyes closing as he breathes it in. No one has ever smelled this good. He doesn’t want to retreat, doesn’t want to return to polite conversation. He wants to taste.

“Tony,” Stephen murmurs, his voice a low rumble.

“I love the way you smell,” Tony says softly.

“The feeling is mutual.” Stephen’s hands come to rest on Tony’s hips. “Perhaps we could take this somewhere more private?”

That’s enough motivation for Tony to pull away enough to meet Stephen’s gaze. He’s smiling, eyes bright. It hits Tony all of a sudden, what all of this means: He’s found his mate. 

“Your place or mine?” Tony says, waggling his eyebrows, and Stephen laughs.

I’d love to see a follow up for this drabble: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51736909 (homeless Tony and dimension hopping Stephen) if you’re willing! The Stephen of that universe meeting Tony perhaps?

I have no idea if the timelines work for this at all, but it’s an AU, so… they do now! 😀

-

Tony has been drinking less since a stranger told him magic was real and then disappeared through a ring of fire. He hasn’t quit—sometimes the drink is the only solace, the only painkiller, the only company he has—but less. Not because the experience made him doubt his own mind, but because he knew it had been real. 

Magic was real, and no one seemed to know about it.

Or if they did know, and they were hiding. 

Tony wasn’t sure which pissed him off more. No one should get to call dibs on fundamental forces of the universe. If there are sorcerers in this world, he’s going to find them and give them a piece of his mind. And if there aren’t… If there aren’t, he’s going to figure it out his own damn self.

So he’s drinking less, and trying to get his shit together, which is what brings him to an actual shelter instead of a doorway. Most folks are keeping their heads down, focused on their own food, but Tony is looking around, which is how he spots him.

The stranger.

He’s in rough shape, his clothes as worn as stained as Tony’s are, hair grown out almost to his shoulders, face hidden by a ragged beard. Tony wouldn’t have recognized him, except those eyes and those cheekbones are hard to miss. It hasn’t been nearly long enough for the polished man Tony had met to reach this state, but the sorcerer had said he was from an alternate universe. It looks like this world’s equivalent hasn’t done as well.

The stranger doesn’t join the food line, instead skimming over the people seated at the tables. His eyes catch on Tony briefly, pass by… and then return. Tony doesn’t look much like his photos these days. Gaze sharpening, the stranger makes his way over and sits down across from Tony. He leans across the table. “Have you met me before?” he asks quietly.

Tony is briefly grateful the man hadn’t spoken his name. It does him no favors in places like this. “Not you, but another version of you.”

Relief suffuses the stranger’s expression. “It was real,” he murmurs. “Magic is real.”

Tony hears it in the stranger’s voice, the same mingled wonder and outrage that had gotten Tony up off the pavement. “And I’m going to prove it,” he says. “You want in?”

The stranger nods sharply and holds out a scarred, trembling hand. “Stephen Strange.”

Tony takes it with a tiny smirk. “You know who I am.”