Tony Stark | 1987

It was, objectively, a bad idea. The kind of bad idea that happened when you were 18, miserable, awkward, uncomfortable in your own skin, and had more money than he knew what to do with– responsibly. He knew it by the third hour of the drive, when the novelty was wearing off and reality was settling in– six hours. This was a six-hour drive on I-95, Cambridge to Philly– to the Spectrum. And he had not planned it. At all. He’d just heard Iron Maiden was playing the Spectrum tonight. He’d called ahead, put a ticket on hold, and just walked out of the lab to his Ferrari F40. Now it was just Bruce Springsteen, the hum of the engine, wind rushing through the open windows, and the creeping awareness that he had, very deliberately, chosen to do something that made absolutely no sense, again, objectively speaking.

There were about a million better uses of his time, half a dozen projects demanding his attention. Instead, he was halfway to Philadelphia in a car he should not be driving this fast, the speakers rattling. It was impulsive. Inefficient. Unnecessary. And he wasn’t turning around. If anything, he pushed the car a little faster at the thought of the things he could be doing– but wasn’t. He hadn’t told anyone he was leaving. No one asked where he was going. No one ever did. There wasn’t a version of this where anyone would have stopped him, but keeping it secret made it feel different. It felt like he wasn’t just leaving for a day or two– he was escaping. A small, stupid rebellion that didn’t really mean anything. Probably.

Except it did. It meant one night where he wasn’t the pride of MIT and the scorn of all the students older than him and not half as smart. It meant a night where he could be faceless, nameless, and blend into a sea of other people– and see fucking Maiden-- actually see them. Live! He turned up the volume again and drove faster.

By the time he arrived at the Spectrum, the idea of leaving had already come and gone twice, dismissed both times. The parking lot was chaos– too many cars, too many people, movement with no clear pattern – and it only got worse the closer he got to the entrance. The noise felt like it was drowning him, both welcome and too much all at once. He didn’t let himself do this often. Didn’t give in to the desire to just exist in the chaos, the noise, the crowd– alone. That was the hard part. No friends, no one he knew– just him, Tony Stark, boy genius, MIT pariah, painfully out of place, trying not to look like it.

Inside was worse, but something pulled him in. Bodies packed too close together, heat rising off them in a way that made the air humid. This was the kind of place where it was hard to think clearly– and maybe that was a good thing– maybe that was something he could get used to. The smoky, hazy air– marijuana and cigarettes passing for oxygen with alarming efficiency –thrilled him. His dark eyes scanned the space as he pushed his glasses back up on his face, his dark hair wild and already out of control. He’d thrown on a t-shirt he’d cut the sleeves off of, and an open vest– he felt stupid, but he didn’t stick out. Probably. Maybe. Shit, maybe he did. His brain did that thing it always did, trying to take in data and return it with something manageable. Clothing trends, movement patterns, how they grouped together, where they clustered and thinned out. He tracked it all, sorting it and trying to impose some order on it.

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand it. He did. Of course he did. He could map it out in his head if he needed to. Reduce it to something predictable. That didn’t mean he knew how to be a part of it. That was different.

Someone brushed past him, not even glancing in his direction, and he adjusted a fraction too late– shoulder catching just enough to throw him off balance for half a second before he corrected. He noticed it immediately, shifted his stance like he could compensate retroactively. It didn’t matter. No one else had even registered it. Right. Good. That was fine.

The bar was the easiest place to start. There was a system there, even if it was inefficient– wait, signal, receive. Repeat. Tony slipped into an opening between two people who looked like they’d been there long enough not to care who was joining them. He lifted a hand, just enough to get the bartender's attention, and waited. The opener was playing loudly– good. Not bad. Not Maiden good. Eventually, the beer made it to him, the cold glass slick against his sweaty palm.

His eyes tracked the guy next to him, watching him lean back against the counter, posture loose, comfortable, like this was second nature, and then Tony adjusted his own stance to match, the angle just slightly off before he corrected. It was fine. Close enough. To anyone else, it probably read the same.

He could do this. It wasn’t complicated, in theory. It was just– people. How hard could that be?

The lights dropped before he could fully settle into it, before he could make sure he was blending well enough. But it was Maiden, and even if he didn’t understand exactly how to do it, how to just be… the moment the first note reverberated through the place, he moved forward by instinct, pressing into the crowd, taking a long drink of his beer. People pressed from every angle as the first song kicked off– and he wasn’t Tony anymore, he was a part of a sea, a swelling wave, and his brain relaxed for the first time in what felt like years as “Caught Somewhere in Time” started to play.

The crowd moved, it swayed, it undulated, it thrashed, and he was moving along with it, caught up in something bigger– better. Freedom, rebellion– this had been a good choice, and then–

The impact hit him hard enough to knock the beer from his hand into the person who had slammed into him, soaking both of them. “--shit, sorry–” He shouted over the band, the apology immediate– automatic, even though they were the ones who’d collided into him like a goddamn supernova. His hand came up like he could fix this somehow, like there was a version of this where he hadn’t just–

And then he looked at them. And everything else fell away—like some bullshit fairytale. His hand moved to adjust his glasses again, his mouth opening like he needed to apologize again because holy shit.

And they were laughing. They weren’t yelling or pissed, they were laughing. A smile slid across his face, easy, boyish, and a little charmed. “Do you need a drink?!” He shouted, leaning closer to them. “I need another drink!”

And just like that– everything changed.