“Huh.” Tony gave her a look.
“I’ve never been here,” Kendis said with a sigh. “Because when I moved to SoCal, I didn’t take any time to play tourist.”
“I used to come here all the time as a kid.” Tony shrugged. “My father was always traveling to the West Coast, and sometimes he brought me along.”
It had been a few decades since he had last visited. He had been too busy with other things, but he currently remembered running through Wilder Hall with glee as a kid while his exasperated mother trailed behind him as he darted from exhibit to exhibit.
Kendis laced her fingers with his and squeezed. “You are going to have to show me all the best spots.”
Tony grimaced. “I’m pretty sure the exhibits aren’t the same.”
Kendis playfully nodded to them, and they walked along the winding white pathway, which led to the entrance. The observatory was still as gorgeous as he remembered, with its timeless Art déco design.
They strolled past the astronomical monument statue and headed over to the nearby bronze sundial. As Tony looked up at the faces of the six astronomers carved into it, he got an odd sense of nostalgia.
‘Hipparchus, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, and William Herschel.’ Tony ticked them off one by one in his mind.
Kendis followed the crowd of tourists through the doors. Then she gasped, her eyes widening as she stared at the Ballin ceiling mural.
“Wow,” Kendis said as her eyes took in the paintings of celestial figures mixed in with famous astronomers and engineers on the ceiling.
“If you love that,” Tony said as he led her through the crowd. “Then you are going to love this.”
He took her to the large golden pendulum.
“This is the Foucault pendulum,” Tony said, pointing to the large golden ball on a cable that swayed back and forth. “And this shows the Earth’s rotation.”
“I would have thought this was just a big bloody watch,” Kendis said as her eyes followed the swinging ball.
“Oh, this is only the tip of the iceberg,” he said with a smirk.
Tony found himself playing tour guide, which he didn’t mind in the slightest. He loved taking Kendis to his favorite spots. Despite some exhibits changing over time, he was happy that the observatory was largely the same.
And witnessing Kendis’s excitement made him feel like he was seeing the observatory for the first time all over again. Her green eyes sparkled as she took in everything, and she had a wide, excited grin on her face the whole time.
Tony laughed out loud when Kendis jumped in the air as sparks flew off the Tesla coil. She slapped him playfully on the shoulder, and he couldn’t help but bury his smile in her shoulder.
“Shocking, isn’t it?” A cheerful female voice said over the loudspeakers.
Kendis snorted at the cheesy line, and then they were off again to another exhibit. Tony tried his best to ignore the warmth in his chest as she moved excitedly between exhibits. It was a welcome change from the terror and rage that had haunted her. Kendis had been through so much, and Tony would give up every cent he had if kept her from suffering.
And the strength of his own feelings terrified him.
Kendis’s touch on his cheek startled him. He couldn’t help but kiss the tips of her fingers and was delighted to see her cheeks flush red.
“Tony?”
“Yeah,” Tony said as he guided her towards the South Gallery. They walked through the gallery and into the Samuel Oschin Planetarium.
“A nut for your thoughts?”
“We are exchanging peanuts for thoughts now?” Tony teased, and Kendis rolled her eyes.
“A nut is a penny in my world,” Kendis explained.
Tony shook his head as he walked past a happy family in a stroller that completely ignored his presence. “I was just thinking that it’s strange not to stop and sign autographs.”
“You miss being the center of attention?” Kendis teased, and he snorted.
“Nah,” Tony replied. “I normally don’t mind the attention because I’m used to it. But I like I can now just be…” He flailed his arms as he struggled to find the right words. “Tony and not Tony Stark—billionaire, playboy, and philanthropist.”
“I never got used to the whole fame thing.” Kendis shook her head. “I went from being a nobody freak living in a cupboard to being the most famous person in the wizarding world.”
Tony stopped and threw her an incredulous look. “Wait, you are not going to skip past the whole ‘cupboard’ thing.”
“Tony, stop.” Kendis shook their head. “its ancient history.”
Tony opened his mouth to argue that it wasn’t ancient history to him. It pissed him off that Kendis had somehow fell through the cracks. She dissevered so much better that. Tony loved Kendis, and it was instinctive for him to want to protect the few people he gave a shit about.
But to his frustration, Kendis, Pepper, Happy, and Rhodey were all stubbornly independent, which meant that Tony had to be sneaky about punishing people who hurt them.
Tony didn’t know much about Kendis’s past. He knew that he would need to know her deadname to get any traction into his investigation. But Tony would find a way and one day he would find her family and make them pay.
Kendis narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously, and he shot her an innocent smile.
They walked through the planetarium, which showed digital frames of space anomalies and large-scale plants hanging from the ceiling. Tony gave a wry, rueful grin at the model of Jupiter.
Jupiter had been his favorite planet as a kid. He remembered learning everything there was to know about the planet. Back then, Tony had obstinately insisted on not following in his father’s footsteps and was convinced that he would be an astronaut and explore space.
Tony was pulled out of his tugs by Kendis’s insistent tugs to planet scales. They took a moment to get on it to see what they would weigh on each planet and laughed at the ridiculous numbers.
The two of them spent hours exploring the observatory. It seemed like they had only been there for a few minutes, but by the time they made it to the James Dean balcony, the sun was already setting. And the Hollywood sign looked majestic with the pink and orange sky in the backdrop.
Kendis leaned against the railing, tilting her head up in the cool evening breeze.
‘Beautiful,’ Tony thought to himself as stared at the person he utterly adored. He wanted to take out his phone and take a photo so he could always remember her like this, but he remembered the tattoo that scrambled any photo taken of her.
Tony shook his head as he walked up to her and wrapped his arms around her waist. She leaned her head against his shoulder.
He wished he could stop time and exist in that moment forever. His thoughts returned to Obadiah and his insistence that Tony and Kendis were too different to be together. But as much as he respected Obie, he was wrong.
Tony and Kendis clicked so well, and he hadn’t had that much fun in ages.
He wanted to spend hours just worshipping her gorgeous body and see her fall apart under his fingers, tongue, and cock. He licked his lips as he remembered he had lost the bet and would bottom that night.
Tony felt his pants tighten at the very thought.
The thing was, even if sex wasn’t on the table, he would still want her around. She was smart, funny, and so damn kind. Being with Kendis had a bought a type of joy that Tony had never experienced before and Tony didn’t know if he was strong enough to walk away from her.
He brushed his lips against her ear, and she shivered. The word “Stay,” was right there on the tip of his tongue. Yet, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t say the words.
In the end, Tony could only hold her in his arms and call himself every kind of coward.
