Notes:

Hetalia- This universe, while not strictly AU is slightly different from the media we know and love. After a scare with the media, the Nations have stopped having "World Conferences" in the same sort of way. They are essentially living underground, with involvement with national issues being decided by the leader of the country, and interactions mostly limited to social interactions. This is mostly because I want to show a more serious side of the characters. This will not be very well explained in the story, so I'm saying it now.

Avengers- This takes place after The Avengers, but before Iron Man 3 because I'm not to sure what to do with the whole SPOILERS removing the arc reactor thing. I'm waiting to see where the new movies take the character after that before making my own opinion.

With that in mind, please enjoy.

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"I still don't see why you're sending me to Britain."

"It's a good business venue."

"We aren't making any money from this."

"On the other hand, the publicity will be fabulous."

"Oh. Publicity. Is that a thing we do now? Cause I'd thought we'd had enough with the whole Avengers thing."

"Stark Industries is one of the leading companies in green energy; we need to be well represented."

"Can't you just send someone else?"

"You've been specifically requested."

"Look Pep, I'm flattered by their interest, I really am, I just see no reason to spend two weeks on the other side of the ocean to go to a brainstorming workshop. Can't I just do video chat?"

"Get on the plane, Tony."

.

"You want me to what?"

"You heard me."

"Yes I heard you, I just don't understand the point. You want me to what?"

"I want you to keep an eye on Tony Stark."

"Okay… lemme get this straight. You are having a covert meeting in Cardiff so you can have a meeting with the Italian mafia which you don't want me to attend, but you want me nearby, so you are sending me to the clean energy conference three floors down, which Tony Stark just happens to be attending, and you want me to what… stalk him?"

"What don't you understand?"

"Why can't I just sit around in my hotel room and read a book?"

"I would find it beneficial to have someone with eyes on Stark."

"What do you think he's going to do? Put on his Iron Man suit and attract loving fans, thus diverting the press away from your inflated ego?"

"He might be a spy."

"Or he might just be a member of the not affiliated with anyone Avengers team, who happens to be attending an energy conference."

"Just keep an eye on him."

"Sir, I find that it extremely disrespectful to Mr. Stark that he wants to enter our country and attend an event that he was invited to and all you want to do is put a tail on him."

"Kirkland! I'm not asking you again."

"Fine, sir. Whatever you say."

.

The accommodations were mediocre at best. Tony could tell that whoever organised this thing hadn't actually expected him to show up. Which was alright. It wasn't like he really wanted to spend much time in the room anyways.

Still, the workshop didn't start till ten the next morning, which meant that Tony had a full eighteen hours to do nothing before this thing really began. Great.

After he checked his email (spam, spam, potential investor for SI, reminder from Pepper), answering Clint's question on where to find the window cleaner (closet by the elevator on floor three said Jarvis), and considering texting Pepper (but time zones, and was Cardiff ahead or behind? Better to just not bother), Tony was really bored.

Fury had, quite recently, insisted that all the Avengers, except possibly Thor, live in the same place to make it easier to contact them. And since Tony happened to have a rather huge tower in the middle of New York, his place was volunteered.

And it was great. It was really great. Most of the time. But Tony hadn't really ever done the "having friends" thing, and he was constantly afraid that he would mess up and loose what little connection he had. So he spent most of his time in his lab, because if he wasn't around to say things then he couldn't mess anything up, but that wasn't ideal.

Because ignoring the Avengers in his own home also equated to ignoring his girlfriend, which was not something Tony wanted to do, and he had the sneaking suspicion that Natasha had caught on to him.

It was just that, they were friends. But not friends that went away if you fucked things up, they were also a team and they worked together, meaning that if Tony screwed this up… he'd have a lot of people to deal with. Living in his house.

He couldn't run.

Tony ran a hand through his hair in frustration and looked at the clock proudly proclaiming that it was thirty minutes past midnight. Ah, fuck what time it was, Tony wasn't spending another minute in the tiny room.

His feet took him down the dimly lit corridor, up a short flight of stairs, around a corner and into the room where the Energy Conference was to be held the next day.

The room was dark by the entrance, but a second bank of lights by the far wall had been fully lit, which allowed for a decent view of the three sleek round tables and chairs.

There was a single man, sitting at the far table with a newspaper over his face. Tony would have thought him asleep, if not for the fact that the man in question then put his feet up on the table. Seeing nothing better to do than say hello, Tony wandered over and took a seat about two down the table from him.

"You here for the Energy Conference?" The man's voice had a sharp English accent, but he seemed utterly bored.

"Yeah, I guess." There was an odd pause. "You?"

"Fucked if I know," the man groaned, "My boss said to be here, so here I am."

"Your boss do that often?"

"Yes. No. Sometimes. He's a git. I try to avoid him as much as possible."

Tony let out a little breath of laughter, and the man pulled down his newspaper to give him an odd look. He looked to be in his early thirties with dusty blonde hair, and enormous eyebrows.

"I take it your boss is not-a-git then?" The British man asked.

"Oh hell no." Even though Fury wasn't really his boss, there was no denying that he was definitely a git. Whatever that meant.

"Did he convince you to come to the 'brainstorming the new clean energy ideas of the future' thing?" The man asked, quoting one of the write-ups on the Energy thingy.

"What, you mean people with over inflated egos yelling at each other about the best way to conserve fuel?" The other man looked as if he were trying not to laugh. "Nah, that was my girlfriend." The blonde looked incredulous, and then began to laugh. And Tony laughed with him, because the entire situation was weird and funny, and the sound of laughter just seemed to chase all the awkwardness out of the room.

"I'm Arthur Kirkland." The British man offered a hand.

"Tony Stark." The handshake was firm, and Arthur's hands were dry and smooth.

"Well, Mr. Stark. Welcome to Britain."

"Call me Tony."

.

"And I'd like to thank you all for appearing at the World of Change Energy Conference today."

Tony was bored. Actually that was what he'd been two hours ago. By now he was long past the bored out of his mind stage and was heading into the 'if I had a gun I'd shoot myself in the foot just to give me something to do' phase.

There had been three hours of opening speeches. Three hours. Mostly because there was a problem with the projector, and despite the fact that Tony or many other numerous people around the room could easily have fixed it, the man who'd made the damn project was determined that he'd be the one to figure it out. After watching him struggle for twenty minutes, one of the other guys, Tony did not bother to learn his name, stood up to say the opening words, except was stalling and rambled for another thirty minutes.

Then they watched the power point which was long and pointless, then this scientist who got invited wanted to say a few words of thanks, then a man wearing a sharp suit made another speech to actually open the conference, which stalled in the middle so he could have a twenty minute conversation on the phone with his wife. After three hours they were finally getting down to the first order of business: the name game.

Arthur again sat with a newspaper over his face, only this time Tony was pretty sure he was actually asleep. Tony himself had doodled through the margins of the information package provided, which was now covered in diagrams of possible engine parts, upgrades to his suit, rude drawings of the people at the table around him, and an immense stick figure battle that had sprawled across the entirety of page five.

He'd texted everyone he could think of and had no response from either Pepper or Happy, a sharp "I'm working" from Rhodey, a "Why are you texting me? Do you need something?" from Steve, and "That bored, huh?" from Bruce.

Currently he'd made it his mission to google every person in the room, and had just about succeeded, except for himself, Arthur, and the two unnamed guys in the back discussing the cable malfunction that had caused the delay in the first place. And he'd already googled himself on several occasions so…

His thoughts were interrupted by a loud bang and some muffled screams, followed by the sounds of quickly moving footsteps from down the hall. The board room was suddenly silent except for Arthur bolting upright, and then a blaring alarm was set off.

.

In the moment before chaos, Arthur observed, time appeared frozen. Just as the alarm sounded, it was if the entire room froze, waiting for someone to have a reaction that would become the consensus of a panicked response from everyone in the room.

That reaction came from a bald man with a beige tie bolting from the room.

As the frozen time broke, Arthur received three texts in quick succession from the Prime Minister.

Bomb threat.

Am clear of building.

Keep eyes on Stark.

Brilliant. Not only was he completely cut off from the politics he was supposed to be involved with, but he was a billionaire's babysitter too. Not that he particularly minded handing out with Stark. He was better than a lot of people, like France. Even for a playboy, he was better than France.

It was the principal of the thing! He was the bloody United Kingdom, and despite the fact that he did technically have to follow his boss's orders, the man could at least be a little kinder to him. Most of the time Arthur was treated like the dirt he walked on.

He pocketed his phone to realise that he and Stark were the only people left in the room. It took him a moment to realise that, like himself, Stark had seen the battlefield and his response to a panicked situation was not to run, but look for an enemy. Stark stood, perfectly still with his eyes closed, as if trying to determine if there were hostile sounds echoing through the building.

"What are you doing standing around?" A uniformed police officer ran into a room. "It's a bloody evacuation! Get out!" The over enthusiastic woman forced the two of them out the door and into the stairwell and yelled, "Go!" before running back into the hallway to check if anyone else hadn't evacuated.

"So, what's going on?" Tony asked.

"There was a bomb threat."

"What?"

"The Prime Minister was having a meeting upstairs. I'm assuming he was the target."

"Is there actually a bomb, because I'm pretty good a defusing those things." As if the mafia would let a bomb anywhere near their leader.

"Probably not. But we should still exit the premises." There was a moment of silence as the two of them wandered out of the building.

They stood for a moment and watched as the organised force emptied the building, secured the perimeter and calmed numerous people in hysterics.

"Huh. They actually seem to know what they are doing," Tony commented. "I guess I'm really not needed." Arthur allowed a look of amusement to creep onto his face. Even if he didn't know it, Tony was sort of like America, he thought he was the centre of the universe.

"We should leave before the place is swarming with paparazzi. Want to go find a pub?"

.

Tony, who still couldn't quite grasp that there were police forces that were actually competent and good at their jobs, was in fact quite happy to follow his new friend in the quest for alcohol. Or at least, he thought Arthur was a friend. The man was exceptionally hard to read.

Still, he was sarcastic and funny, and Tony really had nothing better to do.

"So, do you live in Cardiff?" he questioned.

"No. I live in London, usually."

"Usually?"

"My job forces me to move around a lot." Arthur turned a corner and pointed up the street. "That's where we're heading." Had Tony stumbled across it on his own, he would have thought it a hole in the wall establishment, and probably wouldn't have gone in. But inside was cool and smelled of dark wood, rich ale, and the place was entirely deserted.

The man that wandered from the back had frizzy brown hair, a hard face but kind eyes. Arthur ordered a pint of his finest dark, and then shot Tony a questioning look. Tony just shrugged.

"I'll have what he's having."

The man smiled, and filled two glasses with the frothy brown liquid, and Arthur tossed him some incomprehensible amount of money in pounds, which Tony suddenly realised he had none of.

Arthur led them to a table in a dimly lit corner, and the man vanished again, leaving the two of them blessedly alone.

"What's it like?" Tony said, picking up the conversation that had been abandoned outside the establishment.

"Huh?"

"What's it like having a job that forces you to move around all the time." Arthur stared down at his beer. "If you don't mind me asking," Tony tacked on.

"It's," Arthur hesitated, "both good and bad. It's really good because you get to go everywhere and see so many things that you wouldn't think of otherwise. But it makes it really hard to stay connected to people." Tony nodded, taking a sip of the liquid which was slightly bitter, but achingly rich.

"So you don't have any family waiting for you, home in London?" Arthur's eyebrows furrowed, and Tony suddenly realised that the man in front of him looked a lot older than he first appeared to be.

"I can't even remember the last time there was someone I would willingly call family." Tony suddenly felt like an intruder. As if he shouldn't be there to see the revealed secrets of this man whose eyes reflected a soul much darker than it had first appeared to be.

"Still," Arthur sighed, "I wouldn't trade my position to anyone else in the world."

"So, you like it?" Tony whispered.

"I don't think anyone else is competent enough to do it." Tony snorted.

"Tell me about it."

"So, what's it like being a super hero?" Arthur asked.

"Different." Tony responded, and decided to reward Arthur's surprising honesty with a bit of his own. "And much like you said. It feels really powerful being out there and helping people. Like I could actually make a difference. But everyone just gets excited about the mask, and seems to forget about the man inside. But it's not something I would pass off to someone else, and I've never really had that many friends so..."

"Me neither," Arthur said. Tony looked up to meet his eyes, and was surprised when the blonde offered him a weak smile.

"I just…" Tony froze. Did he really want to share this information? Then again why not, the man was a British man that Tony would probably never see again. "It's really hard for me to connect with people. Sometimes I just wish it was easier."

"So do I," Arthur's voice was no more than a whisper. He slowly reached across the table until his fingers brushed Tony's. "So do I."

.

They stumbled from the pub when it was dusk, and watched as the sun sunk beneath the line of buildings. Tony was amused and also slightly in awe when Arthur used his seemingly magical ability at finding things to locate a local and cheep hotel with available rooms.

Tony's room was a floor above Arthur's, and even though he should really head up the stairs and go to sleep, he somehow couldn't force himself to move away from Arthur's door. The man himself seemed reluctant to lose Tony's company, and after a moment of hesitation, he seemed to make a decision and stepped forwards. Sure he might have moved much closer into Tony's personal space than he would normally allow, but with the feint smell of alcohol on his breath and eyes that seemed to glow in the dark, Tony found he really didn't mind.

Not only did he not mind, but he almost wanted to be closer to this burning enigma that was so like him and yet to different, fire that was reflected in Arthur's own eyes.

Tony wasn't exactly sure who started the kiss, but he knew that it was hot and somehow seemed like he had found a missing part of himself, and by the end of it he was sweaty, needy, and desperate to hold on to this piece forever.

"You talked about connecting," Arthur whispered against his mouth. "Could you show me?"

The rest of the night was lost in passion.

.

Tony woke with a start to the sound of his phone beeping incessantly. This wouldn't have been that much of a problem, except for the fact that he was really comfortable, and didn't want to move.

Every muscle in his body felt like it was sore, but the good kind of sore that only served as a reminder of the absolutely fantastic night he'd just had.

The ball of warmth that was Arthur had curled into his side, his head on Tony's arm and hand next to the arc reactor. Tony was almost too hot, but he had absolutely no intention of moving.

"You should probably get that," Arthur muttered, without opening his eyes.

"Yeah, but that involves getting up." Tony responded.

"As tempting an idea as just lying here is people your side of the pond have probably found out about the not bombing by now." This meant Pepper and Fury hounding on his ass for not checking in immediately after the event. Great.

"I kinda need my arm then." Arthur gave a resounded sigh and slowly sat up. Tony rolled over and managed to grab his pants from the floor without getting out of bed, and fished his phone out from the pocket.

26 missed texts

12 missed calls

8 messages

Well shit. Someone obviously wanted to get a hold of him, then. He ignored the missed calls, and focussed on the texts, most of which were from Pepper asking where he was, what had happened and if he was okay. There was also a concerned message from Bruce, an annoyed message from Clint, several increasingly worried messages from Steve and an informative message from Natasha telling him that there was a situation at Shield that Fury wanted him to be a part of. And then Pepper telling him that there was a jet waiting for him. Damn it.

Tony flumped backwards onto his pillow, tracing the intricate designs made with stucco on the ceiling.

"What's going on?" Arthur whispered.

"Something came up at super hero base. They want me on a plane," Tony checked the time, "twenty minutes ago." Arthur groaned, laying back on his pillow as well.

"I guess you should get going then."

"I guess." And yet, Tony was reluctant. Tony was reluctant because, if he left now, this night would be nothing more than one of his one night stands, in which case he'd never see Arthur again. But that wasn't what this was. Last night had meant more to Tony than that, and he longed to somehow prove it to Arthur.

Another panicked and furious text arrived from Pepper, and Tony realised he would be in serious shit if he didn't head out soon.

He rolled from the bed, quickly separating his clothes from Arthur's and pulling them on. He grabbed a notepad and pen from the nearby table, jotting down his personal cell phone number.

"I'm sorry, I really have to go," He said to Arthur, feeling a tinge of regret as Arthur's sorrowed eyes met his own, "but please. Call me." He pressed the paper into Arthur's hand and watched as a small spark of hope burst into the man's eyes, before he turned and exited the room.

And with resignation settling hard over his heart, Tony left the hotel.

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A/N: Well If you're still here, thanks for reading. I'd like to say that this story is unbetad because I am unsure of how my usual beta feels about crossover fics. Please ignore any typos because even though I did my best to proofread, things seem to slip through. If you are interested, or know someone who might be, don't hesitate to contact me.

Though pretty familiar with Hetalia characters, this is my first time writing for Avengers, so please let me know if you find the characters out of character, and what I could do to fix them.

If you are here from my other Hetalia stuff, don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you guys. The Demon Who Lives Upstairs will pick up again once school starts, and the next chapter of Worth the Risk is almost finished.

Please review though, I'd really like to know what people think of this...

~Rosemary Bagels