Touched

Title: Touched
Author: Saydria Wolfe
Fandom: MCU, NCIS, Stargate
Genre: Romance, Sci-fi, Soul Mark AU
Relationship: Tony Stark/Tony DiNozzo AKA Alex Sheppard
Content Rating: PG
Warnings: Canon-Level Science
Timeline: MCU: Post-Iron Man 1, Stargate: Somewhere around the end of S8, NCIS: after s3 e12/Boxed In. Timelines have been adjusted to sync.
Beta: PN Ztivokreb
Collection: Every Fandom Reverse Bang
Author Notes: 1.) If you have any questions about the Tony DiNozzo AKA Alex Sheppard thing, go read If Found, Please Return by Jilly James. It is fun and amazing and blew my little mind. 10/10, highly recommend. 2.) I did borrow Jilly’s concept of Tony DiNozzo AKA Alex Sheppard as a nod to her as my artist and avoid dueling Tony’s but this story is completely separate and in no was related to her awesome fic. 3.) Thanks to Jilly for being an awesome artist. Her art is really inspiring. 4.) I have a sequel mostly plotted but fuck all knows when I’ll have the time or energy to write it. It’ll come when it comes.
Word Count: 3,252
Summary: Turns out meeting your soulmate is just the tip of the iceberg. Especially when your soulmate is involved with portals, aliens, and Tesla knows what else.

Art by Jilly James

 

30 September 2010

 

Tony huffed when he found Pepper’s office empty. How was he supposed to rescue her off to lunch if she wasn’t in her office?

He could poke around her desktop. That should have all the information he needed to find her location—but that way also lead to arguments about stupid things, like invasion of privacy and disrespecting personal space. Tony wanted lunch, not a lecture.

He could ask her PA. If he did that, he could find out and not get in trouble with boundaries.

Tony had just opened Pepper’s office door to leave again when he spotted the tiny blonde woman that replaced Rushmanoff leading a hottie down the hallway.

Hottie was tall—taller than Tony by maybe half a foot—all of it in long, strong legs, bright green eyes, and sandy brown hair. Confident but not cocky and—Tony recognized him, actually.

Alexander Sheppard was nearly as famous as he was after being abducted without a trace at less than a week old and returned to his family almost forty years later. Returned in a really timely fashion, too. That press bomb had distracted the entire world from Tony pulling Stark Industries out of the weapons business with both of his middle fingers held high.

“Mr. Stark,” Personal Assistant 1.5 shot him the big Bambi eyes and swallowed audibly.

“Miranda,” he nodded.

“Marissa,” she corrected, then looked shocked that she’d dared. “I was just escorting Mr. Sheppard to his meeting with,” she gestured at the door to indicate Pepper’s office.

“Pep’s out,” he told Sheppard directly, “But we can wait for her together.”

Sheppard smiled. It was swoon-worthy. “Fine by me.”

“Oh, uh,” 1.5 stuttered a bit, but in the end fled the area as fast as her sensible flats could take her.

Tony opened the door again with a grand gesture and Sheppard entered with a little grin. “You realize she’s a spy, right?”

“What? How could you possibly know that?”

“I was one of the best undercover operatives in the business before the media fucked me over,” Sheppard smirked, and it was just about the sexiest thing Tony had ever seen. “She needs to go back to spy school.”

Tony knew SHIELD would try again, just not this soon, “JARVIS?”

“I shall investigate, Sir.”

Sheppard gave the ceiling a speculative look but didn’t ask. Instead, he held out a hand, “We haven’t been formally introduced, I’m Alexander Sheppard. Please, call me Alex.”

“Anthony Stark. Tony,” he returned, taking Alex’s hand.

The moment they touched, his hand tingled. A spark of electricity danced up his arm to his neck, where the spark took a bite out of him. He grunted in protest at the unexpected, but not unpleasant, pain of it and pulled his right hand back to explore the area. It was highly sensitive.

Alex Sheppard was doing the same with his left hand.

“Oh, boy.”

Alex looked up at him and his eyes went wide. He stepped closer and Tony obligingly pulled his hand away from the—well, he could guess what it was but he’d rather just have it confirmed.

“Huh.” Tony watched Alex look from his neck to his arc reactor and back several times.

“It’s like a line drawing of that,” Alex pointed at Tony’s arc reactor. Then he turned his neck so Tony could see, “Mine?”

“The same,” he confirmed.

“Soulmates?”

“Soulmates,” Tony nodded, really glad this happened in private, actually. “What did you need here?”

“I came to talk to Ms. Potts about the project I work for acquiring an arc reactor. The project is beyond Top Secret, but I came with permission to read you—and you only—in, if I had due cause.”

“Like my willingness to sell an arc reactor.”

“Like you being interested in selling us an arc reactor. Or, you know, if you were my soulmate.”

“They’d read me in for being your soulmate?” Tony asked in surprise because that was new.

“We try to recruit pairs that both have skills we need,” Alex explained. “We find it limits the avenues for team members to be compromised. And it reduces things like PTSD.”

“Smart,” Tony thought about it. “I’m supposed to fly back to New York, my Tower’s just about two weeks from breaking ground, I was planning to be there for it. Oversee the construction kinda thing. You got anything keeping you here?”

“Just you.”

Tony liked that. He liked that a lot. “What do you say we hit New York?”

And he could romance the hell out of his soulmate before sealing the deal. That sounded all new and exciting.

“Can we hit Colorado on the way?” Alex asked, opening the door for him. “You can sign your NDA, get the five cent tour. I can tell my family what’s up face-to-face and get some Mark Leave approved.”

“Dad still freaking out?” Tony guessed.

“I was missing for over thirty years,” Alex shrugged. “Considering that, he’s been really laid back about everything, but disappearing because I hopped coasts without saying a word would be a bit of a problem.”

“Little bit,” Tony agreed. “And the soulmate thing?”

“I’m not going to hide it from them but we can discuss that on the plane.”

That sounded good to him. “Your plane or mine?”

“Well, I’m flying COD on an Air Force jet, so…”

“Mine it is,” Tony declared and Alex laughed. “Hey, important question, how do you feel about cheeseburgers?”

-*-

“I hope you know this counts as torture under the Geneva Convention,” Tony crossed his last ‘t’ on the last signature on the last page of that what was supposed to be a Non-Disclosure Agreement but was really the LA phonebook’s obnoxious big brother. “What does SGC stand for?”

Alex opened his mouth, then stopped and wagged a finger at him, “That still has to be double checked. I’ll get Paul in here to look it over while I figure out who’s briefing you.”

Alex gave Tony’s hand a squeeze and stood to flee the room, but the ridiculous level of monitoring in the Mountain indulged in betrayed him and the door opened before he could get very far.

Three people walked in. The pencil-straight guy in Air Force Blues with an unmarked neck that dropped off the torture device was followed by a pretty blonde woman and an even prettier brunette man with matching lambdas that someone gave a little circle head on their necks.

“Colonel Carter will be handling Dr. Stark’s briefing on the Project,” Pencil Man—name tag read Davis, combined with the golden oak leaf on his lapel made him Major Davis—said as he took a seat to review Tony’s work.

“Why can’t you do it?” Tony asked Alex.

“We don’t allow romantic partners or family members to introduce each other into the Program,” the woman answered. Silver chicken plus Carter marked her as his official guide Colonel Carter. “The subject matter is exciting and it’s easy to get distracted when telling someone you’re emotionally invested in about it.”

“But you won’t.”

She grinned at him, “This isn’t my first time, sir.”

Any day before today and he’d have made her prove it, probably talked her into a supply closet just to see if he could. Today, he just rolled his eyes.

“Alex,” the as-yet unintroduced guy, Carter’s soulmate, grinned. “SG-4 is taking me to P3X-888. Wanna come?”

Alex perked up, “Chaka’s kid is coming?”

“Chaka’s kid has come. It’s time to present the SGC’s alliance gift.”

“We definitely wouldn’t want to lose all those yummy yummy trade goods,” Alex stood. “Let me gear up?”

“Fifteen minutes,” Dude agreed before leaving.

“I need to go,” Alex told him, practically dancing in place. “The SGC needs someone besides Danny that can speak Chaka’s language, I’m picking it up the fastest, and they’re gonna want me out of the way of your debrief, anyway.”

“Alright, fine,” Tony made a show of huffing dramatically. “But I expect to understand all this before you get back.”

“For you, that won’t be hard,” Alex agreed and darted in to put a gentle kiss on Tony’s forehead.

He manfully refrained from grinning besottedly.

It was another few minutes before Davis declared him cleared to proceed and left, torture device in hand.

Carter moved to stand directly in front of him and held her hands up like a living meme. Her hair was short and messy enough but she had way too much hair to come close to the image of Giorgio Tsoukalos. “Ready?”

“Hit me.”

“Aliens,” she said, expression dead serious, and Tony laughed. Carter relaxed her pose, “No, really. Aliens.”

“So this Chaka Alex is going to see?”

“Is an alien,” she nodded. “Specifically from a race called Unas. He lives on another planet.”

She was so serious but, “How?”

“Instantaneous Wormhole Transmission.” Carter raised an eyebrow, “Wanna see?”

There was only one possible answer to that. “Absolutely.”

They were already sixteen levels below a mountain, she took him down another ten. They made it to some sort of observation/control room in time to see Alex, Danny, and four other guys walk into the room down below.

The guys were teasing Alex and pretending like they were going to wipe off his Mark. Alex didn’t seem upset about it, though. Must be friends.

“Dialing sequence initiated,” the mousy little guy seated in front of him announced and the hoop standing against the far wall began to spin.

“Chevron one, encoded.”

Seven chevrons meant six for destination, one for origin point. Not unexpected for travel through three dimensional space. The kawhoosh was startling. Then it settled into something like an over-excited pond.

“A stable Einstein-Rosen Bridge,” he breathed.

“Artificial,” Carter agreed. “Created for the purpose of interplanetary or intergalactic travel.”

“Interplanetary,” he repeated. “And my soulmate is using it to negotiate with aliens. In camo pants.”

“All active Gate Team members have body armor. Stark Industries CAP-17 body armor, actually.” She glanced at him before turning back to the event horizon, “It’s the best on the market.”

He knew that, that his gear was the best on the market. And yet, the best isn’t good enough, not for his soulmate.

Maybe he could get him to take a suit?

-*-

“So let me get this straight,” he tossed the Ancient equivalent of a binky from hand to hand. They said it was a binky any way, the lights and gentle temperature variations could make that true but the many vibrate options the device had made him less sure. “Fourteen months ago you launched an Expedition to another galaxy. To find the City of Atlantis.”

“Yup,” Carter nodded poking at the small mountain of crystal that was apparently the ultimate expression of green energy, a ZPM. “They’ve checked in so we know they’ve found the City and are living there.”

“You also know they are facing a disaster the Ancients left behind and don’t have anywhere near the amount and kind of material they need to be successful.”

“Right,” Carter did not take her eyes off her project, which Tony understood, he just wasn’t used to being on this side of that equation. No wonder Pepper complained about it when he worked rather than making eye contact. “We were supposed to have sent relief out there to them two months ago but Landry failed at his mandate.”

“Deliberately,” Tony glared at the wall. “Failed deliberately because spies.”

“It’s unfortunate,” Carter agreed. “But we’ve rooted out the Trust and brought in Sheppard Industries to get us back on track. Patrick and Dave Sheppard are being complete tyrants on the ship’s construction schedule, Matt has charmed the figurative pants off the Asgard to get more technological help and supplies from them, and Alex orchestrated the most ruthlessly efficient social campaign I’ve ever seen to get you brought in to see if we can make your arc reactor technology work for a direct dial.”

That he doesn’t understand, he frowned. “Why do they care so much? Why bring me in? I’m their competition.”

“Oh,” she stopped what she was doing and looked at him with surprised eyes. She went so far as to put her tools down and step around her bench to face him directly. “John Sheppard is on the City. He’s the military commander. Bonded to their Chief Scientists, apparently, after they got out there.”

Tony had to sit down. “Why didn’t Alex tell me that?”

“Knowing Alex? He didn’t want to pressure you into doing this if wasn’t something you wanted to do.” She shot him a look and he nodded. That was a good point. “And you two did just meet today.”

“Huh.” Their time together on his jet was fun but that had been a whopping three hours of flirting and easy getting to know you business. “We’re probably due for some alone time.”

Carter shot him an amused look, “Get him to cook for you. It’ll change your life.”

“Yeah, alright,” Tony shrugged. Then he bent over and planted his elbows on her work station for some real talk. “Let’s talks infosec. You have a spy problem, I have an AI built to secure data and root out spies.”

“Would I be allowed to review the AI’s code?”

Tony gave her the look that deserved, “Not unless you buy her dinner first.”

“Ah,” she sighed. “Daniel has a problem with that sort of thing. Who knew geeks could be so territorial?”

Like she isn’t one of them or something. “Uh, everyone?”

Carter laughed. “We could treat her like a contractor? She’d have to apply, go through an interview, collect a salary.”

“What, seriously?”

“It’s not the weirdest thing we’ve done. We have aliens on the payroll,” she frowned, thinking. “Not sure we could offer her health insurance though, how would she use it?”

“Not sure I wanna deal with one of my AI’s having to file taxes. How would that even work? They don’t have social security numbers.”

“How old is she?” Carter asked. “If she’s under 18, she’d be a minor and you’d have to file for her or something, right?”

Tony grimaced, “Maybe not, if we follow that thought out it gets us in trouble with child labor laws.”

“Let’s not go there,” Carter, rewardingly, wrinkled her nose in distaste. “It’s a good idea though, a full-time AI to handle security. As long as she doesn’t go full Skynet?”

“Not a problem,” Tony promised.

It said something about the disbelief he’s usually dealt with that when Carter just accepted that and moved on, it confused him. How long have people been doubting his own genius? Worse, when did he start doing it too?

“I’ll pitch it to General O’Neill. Get me what you can of her specs and requirements. What we can expect from her, ideal salary, kind of stuff.”

“I thought O’Neill was, uh, Secretary of Homeworld?”

“He is, but after Landry’s…” She waved a hand vaguely.

“Fuckery?” he offered.

She nodded, “After Landry’s fuckery, getting the right person for the job is even more important and Jack—that is, General O’Neill—has yet to find the right person.”

Tony tipped his head to one side, “Why not you?”

“They’ll be pulling me out of this lab as a corpse,” she shot him a look and, yeah, he got it. He felt that way about Iron Man. “And even then I won’t make it easy for them.

“The Sheppards got involved at a really good time. Not just for the whole Sheppard Industries thing but, you know how Alex is an NCIS agent?”

“He mentioned it,” Tony agreed.

“He was like undercover wunderkin, took down the Macaluso Crime Family in like a year as a cop.”

“Macaluso—Alex took down the mob?”

“In Philadelphia, yeah.”

She kept talking but he stopped listening because this was something he needed to consider. It changed a few things because, A.) His soulmate was definitely getting a suit. B.) Tony could be cool with Alex teaching Friday and maybe Jocasta for this Area 51 all about spy hunting. C.)—

“Wait, so FRIDAY would be Alex’s subordinate?”

“Friday’s your AI?”

“The one we were talking about the SGC hiring, yeah.”

“She’d technically be a contractor working on base security, so yeah she’d answer to him. Does she have a last name?” Carter asked. “We could work her into our alien crew, you know for protections and taxes and stuff. Most of them use the last name Taylor.”

“Friday Taylor.” It had a decent ring to it. “I’ll run it past her, see what she thinks.”

Time for business. “What kind of power requirements are we talking for dialing Pegasus Galaxy? How long is a dial window?”

“Dials last for 38 minutes. The power required to dial the City is right around one and a half terawatts.”

His jaw dropped even as his mind started spinning on solutions. “Are you shitting me?”

“Unfortunately not.”

“I need specs for…everything.”

“I’ve got specs for everything,” she opened a drawer and pulled out a StarkPad.

He took the Pad. It wasn’t networked—possibly on purpose?—but that was easy enough to fix.

Step one was to reach out the JARVIS. They’d made him leave his phone behind at one of the surface-level security offices before they subjected him to the phonebook treatment but if JARVIS wasn’t neck deep in their system by now, he’d be really surprised by his cyber son.

A chat window popped up in the bottom right hand of his screen

JARVIS: Greetings, Sir.

Tony grinned. Sorry not sorry, Carter.

Sir: Start learning the data on this pad, J. We’ve got work to do.

JARVIS: Of course, Sir. Should I inform Ms. Potts that you’ve taken a new position?

Oh, good question.

Sir: Yeah, tell Pep to get to New York to do the rebuilding thing. We’ll tell her when to expect us when we know that information.

JARVIS: Of course, Sir.

And he dove face first into the wide world of no-longer-theoretical astrophysics.

He wasn’t sure how much later it was when tapping on a wall grabbed his attention. He looked up to see Alex leaning in the doorway, back in the suit he had been wearing when they met, jacket thrown artfully over one shoulder.

“Hey.”

Alex grinned at him, “I’ve always wanted to say this so bear with me.”

“Okay?”

“How was work, honey?”

Tony threw his head back and laughed.

“Sh,” Alex moved right into his space and threw his free arm across Tony’s shoulders. “Carter’s asleep on her cot and we don’t have enough coffee to wake her safely.”

“We have coffee?” Tony sat up a bit straighter.

“Well, no, but she requires at least half a pot to regain her humanity after a nap.” Alex shrugged. “You hungry?”

“Yeah, what time is it?”

“Three AM.” Tony reared back to look at his soulmate in shock. Alex just shrugged, “P3X-888 is eight hours behind us and speaking Unas takes as long as it takes. You wanna get out of here? I grabbed your phone from security.”

Tony nodded and took the phone, “Food?”

“Our choices are McDonalds or the little Chinese place just off base,” Alex offered.

“Chinese,” Tony voted and stood to stretch. “Where are we staying?”

“Dad bought a condo in Colorado Springs for the family. You can sleep with me, or use the guest room, or I can drop you at a hotel. Your pick, absolutely no pressure.”

Waking up next to his soulmate sounded awesome, actually. “Chinese, your place, sleep.”

Alex grinned. “Yes, sir.”

 


 

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34 Comments:

  1. Pingback: Art & Story #3 | Every Fandom Bangs

  2. Magda Rantanplan

    nice, i love it; Alex will rock Tonys world so hard 🙂
    And i love seeing people having faith in Tonys abilities.

  3. Great story, ty!

  4. Ah the endless possibilities for a devious mind with this plot. Thoroughly, enjoyable read. The art for this story is top notch!

  5. Aww! I just *adore* Tony and Alex. Amazing job. I’ll definitely be rereading this like it’s my drug of choice and I need a fix. Thanks for sharing, dealer mine 😉

  6. This is beyond lovely. Thank you. I do love this pairing wherever I can find it.

  7. Oh wow, what a natural fit! I’d love to see Tony get involved with the Stargate universe. He, Alex, John & Rodney would produce epic snark. Love this!

  8. Lovely!! Thank you!

  9. *pets the pretty* I love this, you, and your twisty little mind. Fantastic job, Saydria. This is a credit to Jilly’s Alex.

  10. Love the way they met, and Friday Taylor is perfection!

  11. That was lovely. Oh, well done!

  12. This was brilliant! Thanks for letting us in to your amazing world. I love your Tony and Alex! I foresee much snark and great sex!

  13. Very good

  14. You! I don’t even know what to do with you!!! You continue to rock my world, and blow me right the fuck away! I. Loved. THIS!!! WEEEEEE. Thanks for making my Sunday magnificent. 🙂

  15. This is amazing! I am a complete sucker for both Tonys, but also them both showing themselves and the world how brilliant they are. Seriously, loved this from start to finish.

  16. This is a genuine delight. I love Alex Sheppard anyway, but Alex plus Tony is just delicious. There’s something almost giddy about introducing Tony Stark to Stargate, like both universes are about to do a somersault. I really loved the whole vibe of it. Awesome story, Saydria!

  17. I think the noise I made upon finishing this was something like “arrraahargah!”. This was great! I loved the interaction with Sam, mostly because it’s so nice to have a professional treat Tony like he’s genuinely good at what he does and just accept at face value that what he says is accurate you don’t get that much even in fic and it’s a refreshing change and I think a more realistic interpretation of how that kind of interaction would actually go irl and I love it. I love everything else too, the whole fic is divine but I’ve been thirsting for this specific kind of Tony Stark content for a long time and it’s such a relief to find not just the content i long for but to have it packaged so nicely in such high quality writing! thank you! Thank you!

  18. I adore Jilly’s Alex Sheppard and you did an amazing job weaving him into your world. Tony and Alex’s initial meeting was delightful. I love how direct Alex was about the intent of the meeting and his willingness to follow Tony wherever. I was also amused by the “your plane or mine?” exchange. I liked Tony and Sam discussing how to put an AI on the payroll even better. Thanks for this peek into a better future for Tony and letting us find out more about what the Sheppards are up to.

  19. I’m so glad this finally opened for me. (My net was giving me fits) It would have been a tragedy to miss out on this Joyous romp. Thank you for sharing

  20. I think I subconsciously put fantastic shorter fic out of my mind so I can experience it for the first time again and again. I never remember I have read this story until I get to the end and go, huh, I already liked this story and then it all comes back to me…until the next time. This is lovely and you are fantastic!

  21. Oh that made my Saturday, Loved it.

  22. I just found this very delightful story, thank you, WW.

  23. Great Story. Thank you for sharing

  24. Love this story and would love a sequel.

  25. A lovely story, I love where you have taken Alex.
    Tony Stark would be fascinated with all the science around stargates and the SGC and it was great that Carter appreciates his abilities, as others use them but also take him for granted.

  26. Oh, that was just awesome! Those two are a good match, and I think they would really appreciate each other. It was nice to see Tony and Sam working well together, and the conversation about the SGC hiring FRIDAY as a contractor was great! Thanks so much for sharing! 🙂

  27. Great story. Lot of fun. Thank yo.

  28. I love this!

  29. Loved it. Thank you for sharing

  30. Great story. I love their interactions. They suit very well together.

  31. Really loved this, great story

  32. Oh my gosh yes! I love them together.

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