Lucius returned to the St. Regis just after sunset and knew the suite was occupied before he dropped his invisibility.
He smiled without warmth.
He settled in his armchair and turned himself visible.
"To what do I owe this visit, Mystique," he asked, "or should I say Raven Darkholme?"
The exotic woman in the opposite armchair startled. She took her reaction under control and stood with easy, deliberate grace. She let her gaze travel the length of him in a way that was meant to be both assessment and suggestion.
"You are well informed, Mr Noctis."
"I make an effort."
Mystique inclined her head a fraction.
"I bring regards from Magneto. He wants you to know he will continue supporting your case against SHIELD. The Brotherhood stands with you, and we would like a direct line going forward."
She let that settle before adding the practical part.
"We are also interested in your products. Especially the newest one."
That pleased Lucius immediately.
Eric Lehnsherr was a useful man to know and a mean piece of work to stand beside, which counted as two separate virtues in Lucius's book. The Brotherhood had reach, power, and the kind of open hostility towards everything that made polite diplomacy unnecessary.
He gestured towards the sofa.
"Sit. You've arrived bearing good news, and I reward that."
Mystique sat again, crossing one leg over the other. Outwardly, he looked relaxed. Inwardly, his focus had already slipped under her skin and into the architecture of her mutation. The X Gene sat there with the same irritating complexity all mutant gifts carried, but hers was cleaner in function than most. Structural mimicry. Cellular reconfiguration. Bone, skin, muscle distribution, pigment, voice, surface chemistry, even the little unconscious physical tells that made a disguise hold up under more than a glance.
He asked the necessary questions in a tone that sounded casual enough to be trustworthy. Mystique answered the ones she chose and let the others slide off her smile. They circled each other for the better part of an hour, with Magneto, politics, government pressure, mutant rights, and business all passing over the table in neat, careful portions. By the end of it, they had not become friends, but friendship had never been the point of the meeting.
Transactions were more honest.
Lucius sold her a large quantity of potions at a price that would have offended the rest of the world. Mystique promised the payment would be delivered as he liked on her next visit, which told him more about Brotherhood funding than any speech could have done.
When she rose to leave, the case in her hand held enough LHP, LSP, and Strengthening Potions to outfit a small crisis.
"At least now," she said at the door, "we won't have to go through hotel staff to reach you."
Lucius leaned back in the chair.
"That depends entirely on whether I feel like answering."
Mystique smiled once, thin and amused, then left.
Lucius watched the door close and thought about metal, magnetism, and the deep personal joy of one day getting his hands on the details of Erik's mutation. That would be worth real effort.
-
The Stark Expo looked like Tony Stark had tried to bottle applause and set it on fire.
Lights swept over towers of branding, giant screens, polished steel, and enough staged confidence to make governments feel underdressed. The crowd came ready to believe in the future as it looked better with music, logos, and a man in a suit promising it belonged to them while carefully keeping all the keys for himself.
Lucius had found a seat and the least offensive angle available. Pepper sat beside him with the face of a woman who had been running damage control for so long that spectacle now registered as a threat until proven otherwise.
Lucius, by contrast, was finding the whole thing sleepier than Monaco.
Justin Hammer took the stage with the smug panic of a man who had finally paid enough money to pretend history would remember him kindly. He started talking before the applause had properly finished, which was very on brand.
"The next generation of military protection," he announced, swelling with every syllable, "the future of remote combat, security, deterrence, and American superiority."
Rhodey stepped out in the weaponised War Machine platform, now burdened with Hammer's taste. Behind him came the drones, rank after rank of them, marching into the light in a display designed to impress people who had never understood that more guns did not automatically count as more efficiency.
Lucius watched them file out and clicked his tongue.
"Good Lord. He has built a parade in lower quality than..." He stopped murmuring.
Pepper did not take her eyes off the stage.
"He's proud of it too."
"Of course he is. Mediocrity always travels with its own applause."
Hammer kept talking. War Machine stood there suffering visibly. The drones filled the platform. The audience cheered. The public loved anything large, metallic, and expensive enough to make them feel included by proximity.
Then Tony dropped out of the sky.
The hero's landing hit the stage dead centre with enough force and timing to do what Tony did best, namely steal the room from a man who had spent millions arranging it.
Lucius smiled despite himself.
"There he is."
Pepper exhaled in relief.
Tony rose from the landing, Iron Man gleaming under the lights, and the entire Expo shifted around him at once. Whatever Justin Hammer had wanted the night to be, it now belonged to Tony Stark and whatever emergency he had decided to drag in with him.
Lucius leaned back.
At last, something worth watching.
--
Two hours before Tony Stark made his heroic entrance at the Expo, he arrived at the St. Regis in a temper held together by righteous indignation and the discovery that Lucius had emotionally blackmailed him out of several excellent cars.
He hammered the suite door until it opened and found Lucius standing there in nothing but boxers and a level of irritation that would have been reasonable from anyone else and looked indecently natural on him.
"You rude playboy," Lucius muttered, stepping back just enough to let him in. "Civilised people knock once and wait to be ignored."
Tony did not enter first.
He punched him.
The hit landed squarely and achieved very little. Lucius's head shifted, his face changed colour by the smallest amount, and then he looked back at Tony with open disappointment.
"That was childish."
Tony pushed past him into the suite.
"You lying bastard."
Lucius shut the door, watched him stalk to the bar, and let his telepathy brush the edges of the reason before he even bothered asking.
Scenes started to unfold, including Fury's dinner ambush, the truth about the cars, and the story of his poor house and car. Tony's outrage was blooming in fresh, hot colour because the one thing he could never quite forgive was being manipulated while he thought he was the charming one in the room.
Lucius sprawled across the sofa and waited until Tony turned back with a drink in hand and murder in his eyes.
"Did you get that out of your system?"
"Not yet."
Lucius snapped his fingers.
Tony vanished.
A second later, he reappeared in the sea, with cold water seeping into his clothes and his dignity slipping away before the rest of him properly knew what had happened. Lucius followed him after a short, extremely satisfying pause and floated above the surface while Tony splashed, swore, and looked up with a hatred that finally felt proportionate.
"Feeling better?" Lucius asked around a yawn.
Tony spat seawater.
"Do me a favour and lift me."
Lucius did.
The moment Tony came within range, he swung again.
The punch landed cleaner this time because Lucius had been generous enough to indulge the request. It broke the concentration for a fraction of a second, which was enough for both of them to drop back into the ocean like idiots with money.
Lucius came up first, this time genuinely irritated.
"Are you going to behave, or do you want to remain as part of marine life?"
Tony wiped saltwater off his face.
"Lift me. As for yourself, stay in the water, you lying son of a bitch. Swim around, find some sharks, and compare notes."
Lucius drew them both out of the sea again and kept them hovering a few feet above the surface while he slowly floated back towards the coast.
"I still can't believe you're this angry about some wheels."
Tony stared at him.
"Some wheels?"
"Yes. Lovely wheels. Expensive wheels. Wheels that were happier with me."
"You conned me out of them with a story about vehicular bereavement."
Lucius gave him a patient look, the kind one used on small children and underperforming assistants.
"That is a very emotional way to describe negotiation."
Tony opened his mouth.
Lucius cut him off by lifting a hand in airy instruction.
"No, listen. This is Hydrotherapy, the key here is to stay calm. Breathe, find your centre. Embrace the salt. Let the sea wash the anger out of you and carry you into a more enlightened relationship with loss."
Tony's stare became murderous again.
"That is the worst thing you have ever said to me, and you once argued that my near-death experience had improved my market value."
Lucius looked pleased with himself.
"Then the technique is working."
"Cut the crap. You're returning those cars."
He paused, took a breath, then added the punishment before Lucius could try and drift out of it.
"And you're coming with me to the Stark Expo."
Lucius turned his head.
"Why would I do such a thing?"
"Because you lied to your most important friend." Tony's tone took on the offended righteousness of a man who believed the phrase despite himself. "And because if I have to deal with the Expo tonight, you have to suffer too."
Lucius considered him.
"Not true. I have other close friends. Very close friends."
Tony looked at him with a deadpan expression so flat it almost counted as art.
"Give me one name."
Lucius thought about it for a moment and found one.
"Daisy."
Tony squinted.
"And what does this Daisy do for a living?"
Lucius thought again, more for style than content.
"Mercenary."
Tony kept staring.
"That is not helping your case."
Lucius floated on in silence for a beat.
"I didn't realise I had one."
That answer, annoyingly, was honest.
By the time they returned to the hotel and changed, Tony had not forgiven him. He had, however, regained enough self-control to save the next punch for later.