Fandom : Iron Man
Title :
dust is gonna settle Author :
gabby_silang Rating : M
Characters & Pairings : Maria/Howard Stark
Length : ~4K words
Warnings : As the author says, it's rated for "sexual content between people of rather different ages" - Maria is 16, Howard is much older.
Summary : Her father still isn't home. Her mother is dead, but Maria has her scarlet red lipstick, and her dark, clever eyes. She's made herself a ham and cucumber sandwich; she lies on her bed and takes small bites upside-down, the fission book splayed open across her stomach. She considers the life of the spy Howard thinks she is.
My Rave Review :
One of the things that has most intrigued me about the Iron Man movieverse are the little snippets we get of Tony's parents' story. Just like in the comicverse, Howard is hugely important in terms of the scientific/engineering history of the Marvel universe - he's the founder of Stark Industries, participant in the Manhattan Project, prolific inventor - and in the sequel John Slattery acted the hell out of his little snippet of a scene and ensured that I'd love him to death.
However, we know virtually nothing about Tony's mother, Maria. This story fills in that gaping hole in the history of the Stark family in an inventive, clever way. Here, Maria is the young daughter of one of Howard's co-scientists on the Manhattan Project; she meets Howard when they are both living at Los Alamos, and a romance between them blossoms. It's not a typical love story, but it's sharp-edged and dark and fascinatingly drawn, and fraught with the tensions of those days at Los Alamos. Take a look:
"What's all this reading up on chemical engineering, then? Most young ladies don't innocently dabble like that." She opens her mouth but he plunges on, even louder. "Building anything yet? Your old man's so busy, you know, he asked me to keep an eye on you."
And she realizes he's laying groundwork. And she wants to crawl into his lap and bite his lip, kiss his eyelids. She wants to give him something in return. She slides her leg against his like it's an accident.
"I'll tell you all my plans," she says, and he looks at her like he sincerely wants to know them.
This is another one of those stories that has snuck its way into my personal canon. Maria is so fierce and smart, and Howard is so dead-on from what we know of him in canon. It's clear to see, from this story, how Tony is the culmination of their intellect. He is very much his father's son - and his mother's.