The Hamptons' House

1994: Part 1

The three years between the weekend when you had driven from the Stark's Hamptons' house to your parent's place in New Jersey had been some of the most dramatic to date. It was like a whole lifetime of events was shoved squarely into those three short years.

For you, it meant moving to DC and finding a place to live. New friends. New colleagues. Working on your Ph.D. Earning said Ph.D. You'd even gotten a rather sought-after position at the Smithsonian that you didn't think you'd even had a shot at getting. This trip to see Tony felt like the marking of things. Things ending and things beginning. You felt like maybe you might actually be ready for a relationship. 24 still felt very young, but at 18 and 21 the idea of juggling long distance with school when you were still just having fun, seemed silly and unreasonable. Now you felt like you were in a transitional space and while you could just go back to having fun, if Tony wanted to try for something more serious - well, you could see yourself getting married and starting a family in the next few years and it didn't scare you at all.

The problem was while you had been busy the past three years it had been nothing compared to what Tony Stark had been through. Seven months after you'd parted ways you'd been watching the news and a report has come on about Howard and Maria Stark being killed in a car accident.

You had called the number you had for Tony but it has rung out. You'd called Rhodey next and left a message for him. He'd gotten back to you a few hours later giving you the number for where Tony was and telling you the Air Force wouldn't grant leave for the death of a family friend.

You'd finally gotten through to Tony and he had sounded drunk and disconnected. He'd given you details for the funeral and you'd flown to New York for it. Tony had his real-world friends and family around and you only really got to hug him and tell him you were there if he needed before he'd been shuffled off by someone else.

After that, he became the center of a lot of attention. He'd finished his fifth Ph.D. and moved out to LA. He'd brought land in Malibu that's defining feature was it was impossible to build on, and promptly started building on it. He'd taken over control of Stark Industries. He was also partying. Hard. He was in the tabloids every other week because of some drunken incident or another. He was sleeping around like crazy.

While you might be ready to start dating for real, Tony didn't seem to be at all, and with how little you'd interacted at the funeral, you began to think that maybe there was one specific setting where you were important to Tony, and that was for one week, every three years on Long Island.

That didn't mean you'd written him off altogether. By the time you pulled your rental car up to the house that was already packed with people and blaring music, you'd considered all kinds of scenarios. Whether you thought he might be ready to hang up the playboy life and take a back seat at SI so you could get your own career going.

That seemed unlikely, but maybe, maybe he might be able to do long distance.

You thought maybe you could if he could settle down at least a little. You'd be able to afford to fly to LA for weekends every now and again. Tony had his own jet so he could definitely afford to see you. You just wondered if he could focus given the state he was in right now.

You also considered whether you could give up the great opportunity you had been given to be Mrs. Tony Stark and attempt to reel in his leash enough to get his drinking under control and the playboy stuff at least more private.

That was a hard one. It would be crazy to take that risk but a job at the Smithsonian could translate to one at a museum in LA. La Brea Tar Pits might be willing to hire you if the Smithsonian was. Then there was the question of whether you could even handle that level of scrutiny from the press.  Not to mention Tony's drinking. It was a lot. He'd have to be sure before you took the plunge.