Marvel shorties

Born to rule

As always when Tony was working, rock music was blasting through the speakers of the lab. Upstairs, in the living room, you could faintly hear the bass. Suddenly the music became louder - AC/DC sang about being back in black - and went back to the faint noise again within a couple of seconds.
First Bruce's head appeared on top of the stairs, followed by the rest of his body. He was still wearing his labcoat and seemed immersed in his own thoughts. However, he nodded a friendly hello to his fellow Avengers who were lounging in the living room of Tony's house. They had some time off between two missions and most of them simply had no other place to be at the moment.

Bruce grabbed a soda from the fridge and plopped down on the couch next to Natasha. She was watching Thor and Clint who played a videogame.
"You're a dirty camper," she said to Clint, who only smirked and took a shot at Thor's character from his hide out in the game.

Natasha turned to Bruce and nudged his arm. "I don't know how you stand it."

"Huh? What?"

"The loud music. It's an attack on your eardrums to work with Tony in his lab."

"Huh?" Bruce frowned and looked puzzled.

"Oh my God, it's too late for you already. You're as deaf as Clint!" Natasha put her hands over her ears in a mocking gesture.

Suddenly, Bruce his face lit up and he put his hands to his ears too. With his thumbs and index fingers he plucked two noise cancelling earplugs from his ears.
"I'm sorry," he said to Natasha, "I forgot I still had these. What were you saying?"

Down in the lab, Tony was working concentratedly on a new sonic blaster for his suit. He was sort of stuck at the moment. He needed an elegant solution for embedding the sonic blaster in the suit's gloves, but everything he had tried so far didn't work out the way he wanted it to.
"I need some fresh ideas," he mumbled to himself. "A new view, another angle."
He turned the sonic blaster around in his hands, listening to the tunes of Led Zeppelin's 'Immigrant song'.
"Friday?"

"Yes, Mr. Stark?"

"Search Spotify for new releases that I might like. I need some new input, not those old rockers."

"Right away, Mr. Stark."

When the last notes of 'Immigrant song' died down, a song started that Tony had never heard before. But it had a fast bassline and the guitars were on the heavy side, so it fit his criteria. Before long, he was tapping his foot to the bass.
"Friday, line up some more songs of this band. They're good."

"They only have one album out, sir. I'm playing that now."

"What's it called?"

"Born to rule, sir."

Tony smirked. "Catchy!"

Whether it was the new music or just dumb luck, about twenty minutes later Tony found the perfect solution for his problem. Satisfied with his work for the moment, he left the sonic blaster on his desk and went upstairs.

This time the music didn't fade out when the door to the lab closed behind the person leaving. Tony instructed Friday to put the music on the living room speakers.

"Tony! What are you doing?" yelled Natasha over the loud rock music. Next to her, Bruce put his noise cancelling earplugs in again.

"What? Don't you like it? They're really good!" Tony yelled back, a large grin on his face.

"I might like it, if it wasn't making my ears bleed from the sheer force of the sound waves!" Natasha held her hands over her ears, for real this time. "Friday! Turn that down, please!"
The next moment the music was at a normal sound level, so they didn't have to yell at each other anymore.