He and his old man have eased into something resembling (if you squint) peaceful cohabitation. This doesn't mean Tony sees a lot of him.

But these days, the family commitment issues aren't all on Howard. Because when the mood catches up to him, Tony Stark will persist weeks on a diet of take-out food in his basement bunker, letting his tan wash out under the all-fluorescent lighting down there. Which means unless he's penciled an armor tech field test into the agenda, he also usually doesn't keep up with the state of the weather.

Today's a little different. Today he has the garage door open, because somebody--he hasn't determined whether it was Dummy or You--must have botched last month's maintenance on the ventilation system, so that in the middle of machining a replacement endoskeleton for the one he'd torqued driving his new prototype into the ground after a power failure, he comes so close to asphyxiating at his desk that he has to take a minute, after stumbling outside, to consider the merits of luring both robots into the driveway, pulling their parking brakes, and letting them roll off the cliff.

So it's by chance, really, that when the first sweat-chilling breeze of that freak winter slips a finger past his mansion, Tony is there to take the goose. He turns an eye toward the sky.

"JARVIS," he says, drawing out the AI's name and blinking as a puff of snow settles into his eyelashes, "Get me the weather report, would you?"