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“He did try to buy the block, first.”
Steve stepped out of his car slowly, eyebrows crawling up his forehead despite Pepper’s attempt to – Steve wasn’t entirely sure, actually. Explain, perhaps, because there was no possible way to minimize the fact Tony Stark had responded to Steve’s disgruntled complaint about his home owners association’s policy on flying flags by painting Steve’s house eye-blindingly red, white, and blue.
Steve was all for patriotism, but there was something inherently wrong with turning the American flag into a giant ‘Fuck you’ to his neighbors.
“He also tried to change policy before he realized the chairperson was a geriatric matriarch who hated him on principle.”
“Gertrude?” Steve asked weakly, “did he wear his sunglasses inside? She really doesn’t like that.”
“Mm, yes, we notice. Also, his name is Italian, which is a sin in the eyes of godly German women, everywhere. Apparently.” Pepper made a note in the sleek black Stark Industries portfolio she’d grabbed off one of the skittish twenty-somethings Tony liked to call ‘whipping boys’. Steve was pretty sure their actual title was still ‘interns’.
“Gertrude isn’t German.” Steve pointed out with a distracted air of a man faced with ungodly horrors.
“Which we also noticed, but Tony had already decided against negotiations by the time she called him a used car salesman with greased hair.”
“So he,” Steve waved wordlessly at his house.
“Precisely,” Pepper nodded, holding the portfolio out with a pen. “Also, you need to sign this petition.”
Suspicion and dread settled in the pit of his stomach and he took them both and asked, “I don’t want to know what this is for, do I?”
“It’s really best just to sign and get it over with.”
Steve knew he should have stayed in Brooklyn.
