Summary:
Tony takes Holly out into the country to teach her how to drive a car. It's a skill everyone should have and it's not like it's all that difficult to learn. Right?
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"I still don't understand why exactly we're doing this." Holly said, her arms folded over her chest. She was pouting, like a little girl. Or like Thor now that Tony thought about it. Both of them did the same exact lip tremble.
"Come on, Glinda." Tony grinned at the woman in the driver's seat. "We've been working on the magic-tech problem for hours today. It's time for a break before we blow ourselves up by accident."
"But why do we have to take that break in a car?" She glared at the wheel in front of her.
"Don't tell me you're scared."
"Tony, I don't know how to drive, and this car must have cost a fortune."
"Oh, it did, but don't worry about that, I have like three fortunes in my back pocket just in case." Tony said. "And it's simple. Just put the car into reverse."
"How?" She really needed to get a better attitude. There was nothing more enjoyable than driving an expensive sports car.
"Have you honestly never driven a car before?" Tony asked. Holly shook her head. "Okay fine. Just...do that there and then pull that and..."
Tony mostly spoke with his hands and thankfully Holly was used to that. She followed his directions on how to turn on the million dollar car and pulled it into reverse. Tony had taken her out of the city and to some empty countryside where he had some of his nicer cars stored in a secure warehouse. All in the name of taking a break. For the past however many weeks they'd been trying to do this, Tony had slaved over different tech designs that Holly would then cast magic at and break. He'd started to feel a bit manic now at the consistent failures. Which was probably the only reason Holly had agreed to this driving lesson in the first place.
Her knuckles were white on the leather covering of the wheel as she tried to navigate out of the parking space and towards the exit of the warehouse. The entire time Tony kept up a monologue in her ear about taking it nice and easy and staying calm and that she was doing just fine. He saw her get more and more frustrated and he could almost hear her internal monologue.
Do not hex Iron Man. Do Not Hex Iron Man. DO NOT HEX IRON MAN.
"Tony maybe you could quiet down for a moment?" She asked before she broke and hit him and before Tony broke into laughter at her annoyance. "Trying to concentrate here."
"Right." He said. "Sorry, just maybe doN'T RUN INTO THAT WALL!"
She slammed onto the breaks and stopped mere centimeters from the wall she'd almost accidentally backed into.
"Maybe try going forward now?"
"Shut up Tony." She said as she carefully shifted into the next gear. Of course, when she did that the car died. She growled and tried again. And again. And again. "Why is this so complicated?"
Tony didn't think he'd seen anyone struggle that much to get a car into first gear before. He explained the process again but didn't get any real results. It wasn't complicated, she just had to press one pedal down a certain amount while shifting the gear stick.
"It's really not that bad."
"Says you." She snarled finally managing to get the stupid vehicle into 1st gear. She pressed forward turning the wheel and pointing the car as best she could towards the exit. Tony started praising and correcting her again in an almost incomprehensible manner. Once she got out of the exit and onto the dirt road she tried to shift into the next gear.
The car died.
She kicked at the car, her foot hitting the plastic covering on the upper part of the drivers seat.
Tony giggled.
"I'd like to see you do so well on a broom."
"A broom?" Now something about that made Tony's mechanical heart beat just a bit quicker.
"Yes. We don't have cars in the magical world we have flying brooms." She said. "And I bet if you tried to fly in one, you'd land flat on your face."
Why had he never been told about the flying brooms? Maybe she'd brought it up before, but it was only now registering in his brain. Holy shit, they flew on brooms. He had to be a part of that. He had to. There was literally no other way this afternoon could go.
"Oh really? You wanna put your money where your mouth is Miss Potter?"
"You are so on, Mr. Stark."
She pushed open the door of the car, eager for the excuse to get out of the car she'd fought so hard against getting inside of, and waved her hand, conjuring two brooms. Who knew where they came from. They didn't look normal brooms, they were stylized and had metal pegs coming out the side, he assumed for the user to put their feet on. She tossed one at Tony who immediately caught it as he got out of the car himself. They both walked towards the nearby field, the entire place was private property of Tony's which meant that it was deserted. They stood in the grass and Holly instructed Tony to put his broom on the ground and then hold out his hand.
"Now just say up." She said. "Like so. Up!"
Her broom jumped right into her hand. She motioned for Tony to do the same. He huffed.
"Up." Nothing happened. "Up!"
The broom at his feet rolled a little as if to show that it had heard Tony but didn't much care for his tone.
"Hmm...It's not very effective." She said, her tone far more amused than it had any right to be. Had she not just stalled his car fifteen times in a row?
"Did you really just make a Pokémon reference?"
"Clint's gotten me hooked on them."
"Of course, he has. Up!" The broom still didn't listen to him. What the hell? Was it defective?
"At least I got your car to move." Tony gave her a very offended look and tried again. This time ordering the broom up with something akin to a threat in his voice. The broom didn't seem to hear him. "You know plenty of men your age have a hard time getting it up. Performance issues are totally natur..."
"Do not." Tony said. "I will figure this out and then you'll be sorry."
"Right right." She consoled. For the next ten minutes Tony tried every sort of version of the word 'Up' he could think of. From various different languages to turns of phrases until he descended into frustrated insults and threats. The broom didn't twitch at all. "Tony you're doing it wrong."
"What?" Tony stopped his rather creative threat to the broom and looked up at the witch who was still holding her broom and looking at him as if she was mystified.
"Think of the broom like...like it's Dum-E or U." She said. "Is this how you'd ask Dum-E to do something for you?"
"Of course not." Tony said. "Dum-E's my buddy, not some stupid piece of wood."
"Aren't there people that just call Dum-E just a pile of metal gears?" His jaw dropped a little as he considered that. Slowly he stooped down and looked at the broom.
"So it's like Dum-E?"
"Maybe not as sentient as one of your bots." She said. "But all enchanted objects have feelings in the simplest of terms. You can force an enchanted object to work for you if it doesn't want to if you're powerful enough but most of the time the objects will resist working with someone they don't like. Think about Thor's hammer. It's very picky about who it will even let pick it up."
"Huh." He said. "And all magic items are like that?"
"Pretty much. Wands, brooms, even magical trinkets like enchanted chessboards work better with people they like."
"Enchanted chess boards?" His mind caught up on the concept of a magic chess board, he shook his head. It wasn't the time. "Wait. Later. Back to this broom. It'll let me use it if it likes me?"
"It's why the car feels so weird to me." She explained. "I'm used to using devices that have feelings, people like Jarvis and your bots are far more normal to me than a car that...well it feels empty. I can't talk to it on a magic to magic level like I can with my broom or with my wand."
"So, you can't learn to drive then?"
"No, I will learn. Just like I'm learning to paint." She said something prickly in her voice. Tony kept back a smirk. He'd seen Holly's 'paintings', they were so poorly done it wasn't even fair to call them abstract. Nonetheless he'd still managed to pilfer one to hang in the lobby of Avengers Tower. It was supposed to be a painting of Steve, but it didn't even really look man-shaped. He'd put it in a very fancy frame and given it a vaguely pretentious title. Within two weeks he'd gotten a call from one of the various wealthy people he knew asking about where he'd found such a talented artist. The only reason Holly didn't know about that painting was because she didn't use the front entrance to the tower often enough.
He couldn't wait to see the look on her face when she saw it for the first time.
"So how do I get it to work then?" Tony asked motioning to the broom.
"How about you try apologizing for being so curt?" What a ridiculous suggestion. Holly's face made it clear she was serious. Tony scoffed and still her face didn't change.
"If this is a prank, I will get you back."
She just lifted up an eyebrow at him as if daring him not to try. Tony rolled his eyes and then looked down at the broom again.
"Hey...broom." Tony said. "I'm sorry for threatening you with a woodchipper. And the thing about acid might have been crossing a line."
Was it just a trick of his eyes or had the broom moved a little? Tony swallowed, this was just like Dum-E or U. He knew how to talk to weird things like this.
"I just wanted to fly, you see I can fly in my Iron Man suit but something tells me that flying on you would be so much different." Tony said slyly. "I'm just imagining it now. The wind whipping around us, flinging through the air at high speeds. Can you do tricks in the air? I bet you could. You look like a well-made broom."
Yeah, the broom was definitely listening to him and Tony told himself it wasn't weird.
"So, what do you think? Are you willing to give it a try?" Tony stood up, his knees complaining at the movement. Carefully he held out a hand, just like Holly had done. "Up."
The broom practically flung itself into his hand, smacking into his palm so hard he almost dropped it. The wooden shaft was practically vibrating with excitement.
"Don't drop it!" She said with a laugh. Tony didn't even look at her, too fascinated with the sensation of magic in his hand. It felt different than Loki's scepter had. This felt whole, not twisted and angry.
"What next?" He asked.
"Put the broom in between your legs like this." She said. Tony gave her a look at the very idea of putting his precious bits right onto a thin thing of wood. "Don't worry. Modern brooms have comfort charms for the delicate male rider. Used to be that brooms were mostly for women, a couple of centuries back men started whining about equality in sports and now we have a broom that's usable for all humanoids."
Holly said the weirdest shit with such a straight face. He could never tell if she was serious or not. She reminded him of Loki in that way, not that he'd ever said that out loud. Carefully he put the broom between his legs and to his surprise it was very comfortable. It shouldn't have been, but it felt like he was sitting in a very comfortable motorcycle seat.
"Okay good." She said. "Now, the next step is to jump."
"Jump." She nodded and literally jumped into the air with her broom. Tony shouldn't have been surprised to see the broom activate and there Holly was levitating five feet above the ground like it was nothing. "Trust your broom and jump. Keep your hands on the shaft, like I'm holding mine."
It was good then that she broom was at his eye level. Tony nodded, readjusted his grip and jumped, leaping forward. He prepared himself to stumble on the landing only to find there was no landing at all. Instead he felt himself find a more comfortable position in the broom as he legs dangled.
"Open your eyes."
Had he closed them?
He opened his eyes and then grinned. He was in the air, the broom still trembling with anticipation. Well, who was Tony to deny a lady what she wanted? His hands tightened on the broom and he leaned forward. As he'd been hoping the broom shot forward. It felt just like driving a race car on a track in Italy except better because he wasn't wearing a safety suit and there wasn't any friction to hold him back. The magic of the broom seemed able to ignore things like drag.
Behind him he heard Holly shouting out a warning, but Tony was too busy shouting out his excitement to listen to her. He flew through the grassy field at high speeds, his feet finding themselves comfortably fitted on the pedals. He was laying practically vertical on the broom as he used his hands to keep a steady course. The broom kept going faster and faster, without any hesitation.
The forest that surrounded the huge clearing came up way faster than he intended. Tony pulled up on the broom trying to slow down but found himself turning at a near 90 degrees straight up into the sky. His excited yelling turned more fearful as he continued straight upwards. This time there was no Jarvis to correct his flying. He found himself slipping as the broom continued to turn so that he was nearly upside down.
He tried to grab and hold on tightly to the broom, but a gust of wind buffeted him and he fell right off. Before he was able to fall more than half a second, he landed in two surprisingly strong arms.
"Really Tony?" She demanded, looking at him as if she wasn't holding him like he was a damsel in distress. Her wild hair was sticking out in every direction, just like it had when Mjolnir had electrocuted her. "You couldn't wait one second for me to explain how it works?"
"Waiting is for suckers."
"You could have gotten hurt." She said, her lips twitching.
"A price a man should be willing to pay for science."
"This isn't science it's magic."
And all at once it hit him. He'd been trying to do science all this time when magic was the answer. He wiggled a little in Holly's arms as his mind came up with an idea so brilliant, he almost wanted to kiss the witch holding him for inspiring it.
"It's magic!"
"Uhhh, yes?"
"We have to get to back to the tower. I know what we need to make magic and tech work."
"Really?"
"The entire time we've been trying this I've been sciencing my heart out to make a new device that won't react poorly to magic. But it's not the device that's the problem! It's magic!"
"I'm not following."
"Magic is emotions with intent right? That's what you told Lila." Holly nodded still holding him high in the air. Somewhere in the distance the broom he'd been riding finally landed and impaled itself in the dirt. "Well technology can't handle emotion. It's not complicated enough. Jarvis is the most sophisticated tech in the world, and he can barely handle feeling one thing a day!"
"The emotion in the magic burns out the tech, that's why the cellphones blow up! Their processors can't handle that sort of energy." Holly said. Her greens eyes literally sparkled with magic. "Oh Merlin! All we need to do is create a ward that removes the emotion from the magical energy."
"Can you do it?"
"Can I do it." She scoffed. "I'll be a lot better at that than I am at driving a car."
"You aren't getting out of those lessons."
"Come on let's go get your broom."
"My broom?"
"Of course, I got it for you as a gift." She said. "I wanted to teach you how to fly on one since you liked flying in your suit so much. Oh, come on you know the saying. What do you get for a man who has everything?"
She was smiling at him. Having offered him a device that gave him the ability to fly like it was nothing but a mere trinket.
"Something he doesn't have." She finished.
She flew them down to the ground, with far more control than Tony had despite the fact that both of her arms were too busy holding Tony steady. They found his broom, it was half apologetic and half upset that Tony hadn't been able to hold on as far as he could tell. It took the work of moments for Tony to his car re-parked in the garage and then Holly teleported them both back to the tower.
The entire time as they rushed down from the roof to the lab, they babbled at one another about how exactly they could ward to keep emotion out of the magic. There were plenty of wards that could keep specific emotions out of a space, like wards that made a room a literal happy place. The magic identifying certain emotions and removing them while still allowing the magical energy to enter. Holly just had to expand the ward to register and protect against all emotions. No matter how potent.
Holly told him about the Flying Ford Angela. A car that some clever wizard had managed to enchant and had given emotions to quite by accident. The story of the car running off into a magical forest after dropping Holly and her friend off at school had made Tony literally chortle. It seemed that muggle technology had two options when exposed to enough magical energy. Either it could explode because it couldn't handle the emotions being thrust into it, or it evolved to gain sentience and emotion all on its own. This was finally the breakthrough Tony had been slaving over for who knows how long.
Trick question, Jarvis knew exactly how long he'd been working on this project.
Once in the lab Holly immediately began writing out a bunch of things that looked like an awful mixture of latin and runes while Tony pulled out one of the throwaway Stark Phones he had stored in the lab to replace the ones that the team broke on a weekly basis. As Holly worked, she explained to both Tony and Jarvis how the spell would hopefully work. Tony didn't think he'd ever seen Holly look this confident. Magic really was her forte.
Holly worked for close to an hour designing the ward. Her hand didn't even cramp as she wrote out line after line of spell work. Sometimes she'd look at something she created, frown and light the offending piece of paper on fire. Tony tried his best to help but found himself slightly out of his depth. Which was a first and not something he really enjoyed. He needed to get on the studying magic train with Brucie Bear.
All this time he'd been hoping that the answer was in what he already knew. He hadn't even realized he'd been literally benching Holly the entire time. For hours at a time Holly had been coming down to the lab to help but she hadn't really been doing much. She sat in a chair and played fetch with Dum-E while waiting for Tony to tell her to magic something. He hadn't been letting Holly be an equal partner because he hadn't wanted to rely on magic.
But magic wasn't so different from science was it?
Tony looked at the broom Holly had gifted him with and then down at Butterfingers. His robot was peering curiously at the broom, even going so far as to poke it. Both magic and science created finicky things that felt far more than they should at times. Both of them were expressions of a human's ability to create and imagine and feel.
"We'll need to test it for every emotion I can think of, just in case I missed any or the ward isn't strong enough to handle something." She said breaking Tony out of his thoughts.
"Then start with something easy." Tony said carefully placing the phone on the table they'd cleaned off for this very purpose. It was a stylish black phone with a glassy sheen to it that just screamed well-made.
"I'll try excitement." She said. "I'm feeling pretty excited right now."
She removed her wand and carefully shot a spell, one designed to change the phone's color from a sleek black to red, at the phone. It was a low-level simple spell, something that equaled the amount of ambient magic in a wizard congested area. Tony expected it to burst into flames or crack open or make some awful ungodly noise. None of which happened. Instead the phone simply turned a metallic red. Tony and Holly both stood there for far too long, just staring at the phone waiting for something unexpected to happen.
Of course, the phone did the most unexpected thing of all.
It worked.
Tony kept sending texts and making calls and opening apps. The phone worked exactly as it was supposed to. It hadn't even lost battery power. Holly was literally jumping up and down, her hands clasped over her face to hide her huge grin.
"We did it." She whispered.
"WE DID IT!" Tony shouted right back. "WHOOO!"
He grabbed her hands and pulled her into a dance. They began to waltz around the room, Holly laughing much to hard to take it seriously. Above their heads Jarvis told them congratulations on the success. Tony kept dancing even when Holly stepped on his toes, they danced until they were both laughed out. Holly pulled back, her cheeks red.
"You did most of it, figuring out a good solution. I just did a little bit at the end."
"Are you kidding me?" Tony demanded. "You were patient with me while I pulled my head out of my ass."
She didn't ask what he meant, somehow she just knew. This was Tony's way of apologizing for being stubborn. Loki had left a mark on Tony. He didn't hate magic, not like Clint had. It was more that he was dismissive of it. Untrusting of what it could offer. And that had shown in how he'd treated Holly as she tried to help him with this magic tech problem. Magic represented everything he wasn't. Or at least that's what he'd thought. Tony was starting to think he would have made an awesome wizard.
"Well, I'm used to it. It's been my experience that most men have to do that two or three times a year."
Thankfully that was Holly's way of accepting his apology. She giggled at her own joke and Tony laughed with her before clapping her on the back.
"Come on. Let's try happiness next." Tony said. "Jarvis! Order us some Chinese, it's time to do some real testing."
"Of course sir."