Everything the Light Touches

Chapter One

chapter warnings: alcohol, language

Manhattan. The city that never sleeps. The city that you once called home. Ten years ago when you left for college in California you swore you'd never come back. You were only eighteen but you'd experienced heartache far beyond your years. You told your parents that if they wanted to see you, they had to make the trip across the country to do so. So for the last ten years you'd seen your parents over a multitude of different video chat platforms and at least once a year. Usually Christmas. It's been so long since you've been back that you almost forgot why you left in the first place. Almost.

Tony Stark is the reason you're here now. The reason you dared step foot back in Manhattan a decade later at twenty-eight years old. You started working for Stark Industries out of Malibu, starting as a personal assistant, basically running coffee orders and dry cleaning, to Pepper Potts and eventually you worked up to the level of Executive Assistant to the CEO of Stark Industries as you made your way through law school. Pepper was in place as acting CEO of the company but Tony still pulled all the major strings. And that meant that a part of you still had to listen to Tony. It didn't help that Tony and Pepper had practically taken you in as their own kid, a fact that made you feel closer to them than your own parents at times. Which is how you ended up here.

When Pepper called you into her office six months ago and told you that she'd be moving back to New York to work in the Stark Industries headquarters there and that she and Tony had been very impressed with your work ethic and wanted to take you on permanently as the new legal consultant for the company following your Bar results. A part of you hesitated when you heard the only stipulation was that you would have to move back to the city. You tried to ask Pepper if you could work out of the Malibu office and fly to the city whenever they needed you, you all would have the money and the means to do it, but she insisted that she needed you by her side as Tony started putting his dreams of expanding the scope of his business to paper.

You thought about it long and hard. It wasn't a decision you could make lightly, knowing your history in New York, and the uncertainty that lined your stomach as you thought about all the ways the city you once had loved and called home had possibly changed. But eventually you gave in. You hadn't gone to school for corporate law just to turn down the biggest and brightest job opportunity that would ever fall into your lap. So you said yes. You contacted your landlord and talked your way into the termination of your lease, agreeing to pay an extra months worth of rent but that was it. You said goodbye to your friends that you had met and become close with these last ten years and promised to visit whenever you could. Your closest friend Wanda squeezed you tight and made you promise to call whenever you had the chance and to FaceTime her when you got into town. She'd never been to New York and you told her you'd fly her and the boys out to visit you whenever you could. Wanda had married Jarvis within a year of you introducing the two of them at one of Tony's parties. Not long after came the twins Billy and Tommy, your nephews for all intents and purposes. As a single child you knew that they were closest you'd probably get.

While you didn't FaceTime Wanda the second you reached the city you did send her a few pictures as you took a taxi to the apartment that you'd been able to set up while packing up your life on the other side of the country. Your parents had been upset when you told them that you were moving back home but were not moving back in with them. They almost flat out refused to accept it until you reminded them that you'd spent ten years on your own and that you didn't need their help. They relented at that, shrank back almost as if you'd burned them, but there was no malicious intent in your words, just truth. So they offered to help a little bit and to look around for some apartments and send you pictures before you moved in. You met with the landlord, picked up the keys and rode the elevator up to the apartment. It was a nice place, good views on the city and spacious enough for one person without selling your vital organs on the black market. The movers were still traversing the country but they'd promised to be there tomorrow morning bright and early ready to unpack ten years of memories and place them into a place where they didn't quite fit.