Excentryke's Musings

Title: The Physics Project
Author: ExcentrykeMuse
Fandoms: Iron Man/Twilight Saga
Pairings: Bella/Tony Stark, (past) Bella/Edward
Word Count: 2k
Rating: PG
Warnings: mention of torture (canon), age difference, unrequited love
Summary: Bella didn’t know who he was, with his cocky grin and self-satisfied gaze, but something drew her to him… this man from the science fair.

The Physics Project

Bella remembered him, of course.  He had visited the National Science Fair where she had represented Washington State, and he had stayed to watch her presentation—more than eleven times during the entire three-day period.  He kept on coming back, always standing at the back, never asking questions.  At first she had thought he was one of the judges, but he hadn’t been present on the panel when she won second prize and a scholarship of forty thousand dollars to the technical institute of her choice.

Edward wanted to go to Dartmouth where it was cloudy.  He had filled out an application for her, but she didn’t want to go anywhere where it was dark and rainy.  She wasn’t even sure she loved Edward anymore, now that he had abandoned her once and could very well abandon her again.

In the end, she chose Caltech because California was sunny and Edward couldn’t follow her there.

In her sleep she had whispered, “Who are you?” and Edward had heard.

He knew it was over then. 

It had been over for Bella long before now.

She was in her junior year at Caltech when she saw the man—whoever he was—leaning up against a tree and undoubtedly looking at her.

Pausing, Bella considered what to do.  She dithered a bit, shifting her backpack on her arm, and somehow knew he meant to come over.

As he approached, Bella fiddled with her hair, brushing it behind an ear.  Her fingers twitched around the books she was carrying, and her breath caught as this man came and stood directly in front of her.

“Hey, beautiful,” he whispered.

Bella could only look up to where his eyes were shaded with sunglasses.

“You were at the science fair back in oh-six,” she admitted dumbly.  She bit her lip at how stupid she sounded.  “I remember you.”

“Glad I’m memorable,” he answered, a definite charm to his voice.  It was the first time Bella had heard him speak, and his tone was cocky but attractive.  This man was nothing but attractive, even though he was clearly old enough to be her father.  Then again, Bella liked older men.  Edward, after all, had been over a century old.  “You should have won first prize.”

Smiling to herself, Bella glanced down at the books in her arms.  “I still got a scholarship,” she told him.

“And how do you like it here?” he asked, his gaze intense behind the shades.  “Is it everything you’d hoped it’d be?”

“Oh, yes,” she agreed.  “But there aren’t any literature classes.”

“No literature classes?” he mused.  “You like literature as well as Physics, then.”

“I read Brontë every night before I go to bed.”  At this she blushed and looked away.

He continued to stare at her.

“Who are you?” she finally asked as he just continued to take her in, both of them standing in the quad.  Bella noticed he was attracting a lot of attention from passing students.  “Are you a professor here?”

He chuckled to himself.  “No, Isabella, I’m not a professor here.”  He paused for a minute.  “Do you like being called ‘Isabella’?”  He had obviously read her name in the presentation notes back the several years previously and somehow remembered it, even now.

“Bella,” she told him.  “No one calls me ‘Isabella.’”

“Bella,” he murmured, a small smile on his face.  “I’ve been calling you ‘Isabella’ in my head this whole time.”

He had been thinking of her?

Bella immediately blushed, the horrible stain of red stretching down her neck and onto her chest.  She was wearing a tank top as it was so warm in the autumn heat, and she feared her arms might turn red from embarrassment.

“Who are you?” she asked again.

“Can I take you for coffee?  This campus has a great little place a couple of buildings over.”  He answered a question with a question, his voice still cocky.  Bella wondered why he wouldn’t just tell her.

They were garnering more and more attention the longer they stood there, so Bella nodded, allowing him to lead her to the campus coffee joint.

“I went to MIT,” he was now telling her, “long before you were born.”  There was a jovial tone to his words, as if he were revealing his secrets.  “Caltech, though, is a great school.  The best on the West Coast.  Very competitive.”

“I wanted a challenge,” she responded, “and somewhere warm.”

He laughed at that, looking up at the sun, his eyes still shaded by the sunglasses.  “It certainly is never cold in California.”

“No,” Bella agreed.  “Not that I’ve noticed.”

When they got to the coffee shop, the man had Bella grab a table and went to go put in their orders.  Bella didn’t actually drink coffee, but he promised her they had green tea.  This was California, after all.

When he came back with their drinks in large cups that could almost be described as “bowls,” he took off his sunglasses and took her in.

He was a very handsome man.  He had a beard closely shaven to his face and dark eyes.  They were human eyes, neither golden nor red.  She liked that.  She didn’t have to worry that he would lose control when she was around him.  That had always been a concern with Edward, even though he promised he would never hurt her.  Somewhere in the back of her mind, she had never quite believed him.

“You don’t know who I am.”

Bella looked up, shocked.  “Am I supposed to?”

He chuckled again at this.  “It’s a little surprising, actually.  I thought this would be so much easier.”

Taking a sip of her tea, Bella pondered that for a moment.  “Are you a big tech guy?”

“A very big tech guy,” he answered firmly, as if it were obvious.  To him, perhaps, it was. 

“My project was in Physics.”

“My work involves physics,” he told her nonchalantly.

“Are you a talent scout?”  That would make some sort of sense.  It would explain why he had watched her presentation at the fair more than eleven times and possibly why he was here now.  Students got snapped up all the time by Google or other tech companies.  Caltech was a breeding ground for tech geniuses who were on the cusp of a breakthrough.  Bella was one of the few students who wasn’t studying tech at Cal, she was in the physics department.  Physics, though, had many real world applications.

He chuckled again.  “No, I’m not a talent scout, Bella,” he assured her.

“Then why is that table looking at you as if you could make all their dreams come true?”

Several students had noticed them when they walked in, catching glances at their table and whispering among themselves.  It was honestly strange.  Bella didn’t know what to make of it.

“Bella,” he told her carefully, “I’m Tony Stark.”

She paused.  Everyone knew who Tony Stark was.  He was a science genius and the owner of Stark Industries.  He had been plastered all over the news the previous summer when his convoy in Afghanistan had been blown up and he had been presumed dead.  He had blasted his way out of a cave where he was being held for ransom less than three weeks later, stunning the world.  Bella had, of course, heard the story.  She just didn’t pay attention to the news when it was on or look at magazine covers.

“And you liked my project?” she asked in confusion, refercing the science fair several years earlier.

“Bella,” he told her as he leaned forward, suddenly serious.  “You took my arc reactor and made it on a massively smaller scale and even more energy efficient.  You were my inspiration in Afghanistan.”

“I was?” Now Bella was really confused.

Tony carefully unbuttoned his suit jacket, which had been clasped nearly all the way to his neck in an interesting fashion decision, and showed her his chest—which was glowing under the cotton t shirt he was wearing.

“Is that—?” Bella breathed.

“The only thing keeping shrapnel from entering my heart,” he told her calmly before closing his suit jacket.  “I engineered it—or, an earlier model—in Afghanistan.  This beauty is keeping me alive.”

“Oh,” Bella sighed.  “I should sue you for infringing on my patent.”

“Already taken care of, Bella,” he promised.  “I am willing and able to pay royalty fees for the rest of my life.”

Bella blinked.  She had only been joking—and maybe a little bit serious.  She was surprised to see an arc reactor in his chest.  It was unbelievable.  The one she had engineered had barely fit on a table, it was so large and bulky.  It was smaller than the arc reactor at Stark Industries, but it definitely wasn’t as small as that.

She tried to take a calming breath.  Tony was only here to tell her he had reengineered her design.  There was no other reason.  It was silly to even imagine otherwise.

That made her heart twinge, even if she could barely admit that to herself.

“Thank you,” she breathed.  “For telling me.  I really appreciate you taking the time.”  She assumed the conversation was over and quietly took her first sip of her tea.  It had fortunately cooled down enough to be drinkable while they were talking.

Silence stretched between them. 

She wondered why he didn’t just go.

“Bella,” he murmured, and she looked up from her tea.  His brown eyes were serious and arresting.  “You saved my life.”

Opening her mouth to reply, Bella found she didn’t have words.  What Tony said sounded profound.  He really meant it.  He credited her with saving his life.  There was nothing more sobering than that reality.

He breathed out through his nose.  “I’m not explaining properly,” he muttered before he focused on her.  “Bella,” he told her, pushing aside his coffee, untouched.  “It wasn’t just your skill in engineering that saved my life.  I—” he hesitated “—it was the memory of you that sustained me.”

Bella blinked.  She wasn’t entirely certain she knew what he meant.

“God, I’m old enough to be your dad,” he realized, but he pressed on.  “You were still a teenager when I first laid eyes on you—but I’m in love with you, Bella.  I’ve been in love with you since I first saw your calculations.  And I needed to tell you now that I’ve returned home.”

“You’re—” Bella took a deep breath.  “You think you’re in love with me?  Through physics?”

“Physics,” he told her wryly, “is definitely a love language.”

She opened her mouth to object, but he pressed on.

“It was your face I saw when my life passed before my eyes.  It was the memory of you, so young, so untried, with your sharp mind and even sharper gaze, that pulled me through.—I’ve even been told I whispered your name when I was first captured.”

“You did?”

“Well, I thought it was ‘Isabella,’” he reminded her.  “You may always be ‘Isabella’ in my mind.”

She nodded at this.

For some reason, now that he had explained it to her, she believed him.  If she could think herself in love with a century-old vampire who called her ‘his own personal brand of heroin,’ Tony could certainly fall in love with her by just watching her over a long weekend.  It was improbable, but something about her brain attracted people.  She thought it was defective, at least when she was with Edward and he couldn’t read her thoughts, but Tony thought she was brilliant.

“What do we do now?” she asked, confused.

“Well,” he answered with a cocky grin.  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

Bella blushed furiously at this.  The only person she had ever dated was Edward—

“No, then,” Tony realized with a small smile to himself.  “Well, then, Miss Swan, will you allow me to take you to dinner?”

“You want to take me out to dinner?” she asked in confusion.

“Or skydiving,” he suggested.  “Somehow you strike me as the kind of girl who would rather go skydiving that dress up to go to a Michelin star restaurant.”

She blushed again.  “Skydiving,” she whispered.  “I’d like to go skydiving.”

“Then we’ll go skydiving,” he answered with a grin.  “Bella Swan, I’m going to rock your world.”

And somehow, Bella believed him.

The End.