cap_ironman | FIC: The Beam in His Eye

The Beam in His Eye

The Beam in His Eye (2239 words) by AnonEhouse
Rating: Gen
Warnings:None
Universe: Comics, 616 AU
Genre:General
AU meeting of Steve and Tony aboard his submarine after the Avengers find Cap in the ice. In this 'verse, Tony has never kept his identity as Iron Man a secret.

A fill for the Cap/IM Tiny RBB. Code Name: BREAKOUT

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
- Matthew 7:5 King James Bible "Authorized Version", Cambridge Edition

Steve opened his eyes, and choked back a shout. There was a robot leaning over him. Then he looked up further. The robot was a man in gold armor, holding a matching helmet under his arm. He had one vividly blue eye, but the left... the left eye was a glowing, silvery white, bisected by a scar that stretched from hairline transversely across his nose.

"Captain Rogers? Don't be alarmed. You're with friends," the armored man said. He smiled, which drew Steve's attention to the man's meticulously groomed goatee, definitely non-regulation. He now noticed odd echoes and regular noises of machinery, engines, drawing his attention away from the man to glance at his surroundings. The walls were metal, and curved.

"Is this a submarine?" It didn't make any sense at all. He'd fallen to his death and while it would have been nice to cling to childhood belief in heaven, it had never included silver-eyed knights or submarines. Maybe he was hallucinating. "Are you Captain Nemo?"

The man laughed and offered Steve his arm. "No, although I'm flattered. This submarine is of my own design, but it's nothing as ambitious as the Nautilus. I'm Tony Stark."

Steve's strength was returning, but slowly. He accepted help to sit up, and then swung his feet around to the side of the metal slab he'd been lying on. He shivered. His clothes were stiff and brittle, cracking and peeling. His mind felt the same. "The name's familiar."

"Howard Stark was my father."

"Your father? But..." Steve closed his eyes for a moment. This must be a dying hallucination. He was shivering again, harder than before.

"Hey, hey, stay with me." Tony said. "I'll explain... well, not everything, but I've pieced together most of the puzzle. Would you like some coffee? Black, or cream and sugar?"

"Anything, I don't care." Tony bought him a mug of milky coffee. He breathed in the steam for a moment, before taking a gulp. It was sweet, and creamy, and richer than any coffee he'd ever had. "This isn't helping."

"No?" Tony's face was very mobile, very expressive. Despite the scar and the strange eye, he was still one of the best-looking men Steve had ever seen. Not that Steve indulged himself very often. A curl of unexpected warmth unfolded inside of him.

"I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Real coffee doesn't taste this good." He smiled briefly. "So. What happened to me?"

"Near as we can figure, the cold put you into suspended animation. You didn't die. And you didn't age." Those extraordinary eyes met Steve's. "It's September. Of 1963."

"That's..." Steve stood up. "Almost twenty years."

"The war's been over nearly as long. We won." The way Tony said it, Steve thought it was not an unmixed victory. "I'm sure you have a lot of questions. We're returning to our home base in New York..."

Steve interrupted, "That's twice you've said 'we'. Who's we?"

"I belong to a group of extraordinary people who, well, basically, we combat evil, try to protect the innocent, that sort of thing. We call ourselves the Avengers."

"What are you avenging?"

Tony grinned. "Nothing, really. The name was Jan's idea. Jan VanDyne. She's a fashion designer."

"Your team has a fashion designer?" Steve's eyebrows rose.

"She's known as the Wasp. She can shrink down, and in that form has wings. And stingers."

"I see." Steve picked up his coffee and drank some more. It tasted real, and felt real. He couldn't ever remember a dream where drinking had so many sensations.

"And we have Hank Pym, who shrinks to become Ant-man and can grow to be Giant-Man. He's a scientist, and can control ants."

"Wasps and ants." Steve was really not impressed. "And you're Robot-man?"

"Close! They call me Iron Man," Tony said cheerfully. "We used to have a giant, green rage monster, the Hulk, but he got bored and left."
"Yeah," Steve said. Maybe he wasn't dreaming, maybe Tony was just nuts.

"And then there's Don Blake. He's a doctor, when he's not Thor, the God of Thunder."

"Ok, you've had your fun," Steve said. "I don't believe a word of it."

"No? I've heard about your adventures. Why are we more unbelievable than Namor, the sub-mariner with his dinky little wings on his feet, or your flaming android buddy? The Human Torch? Really?" Tony actually looked hurt.

"It sounds to me like you're all play-acting. My men were fighting a war!"

Tony clenched his fists, the gauntlets making metallic noises. His silver eye glowed even brighter. "You know, I think I made a mistake. Listening to my dad's war stories, I had...well, an obviously inflated opinion of you, Cap. I wanted the pleasure of being the first to greet you." He put the helmet on. "I should be in the control room. I'll tell the others you're awake. Please wait here, there are hazardous areas of the sub." He strode off, shutting the metal door behind him with a clang.

Steve was annoyed at himself. Yes, he was unsettled, and full of unanswered questions, and worried about the people he'd left behind, and Tony's blithe chattering had got on his nerves, but the man obviously meant well. He looked around the compartment, and discovered a neatly folded pile of clothes that seemed a reasonable fit. He was just doing up the last buttons on the shirt, when the door opened and three people dressed in fantastical costumes peered in at him.

"Tony said you were up!" the smallest, a petite woman, said cheerfully. "Hi, I'm Jan! They call me the Wasp."

"Yes, Tony told me," Steve said, trying to be polite. "And..." he said, pointing to the big man wearing armor that seemed more decorative than functional, and sporting long, blond locks a movie starlet would envy, "You must be Thor."

"Aye, that I am, Captain Rogers. I am also Don Blake, a mortal physician. Are you feeling quite well, or shall I summon my other self?" He twirled a sledge hammer idly as he spoke.

"No, no, I'm fine." These people were nuts.

The second man said, "I'm Hank Pym. I guess Tony mentioned all of us. He probably didn't do a very good job of it." He smiled at Steve. "He gets overly enthusiastic. Of course, without his enthusiasm, we wouldn't be a team."

"So, Tony's your leader?"

"Yes," Jan said. She walked over to Steve and tugged at his collar. "This is terrible. When we get to New York I'm making you a whole wardrobe. Tony will probably want to make you a armored suit, though."

"Why would he do that?"

"Well, you are joining us, aren't you?" Jan asked.

"Jan," Hank said softly, "Steve's just woke up."

Jan flapped her hands. "What else is he going to do? We'll bring you up to date, Steve, and you know, it's not as if you're enlisting. You can leave any time you want. But we have fun, so I don't think you will."

"Fun?"

"We have had many epic battles," Thor said. "And betwixt encounters, friend Tony hosts us at his mansion. It's good to have comrades, Captain. We would welcome you, for so long a time as you wished to remain with us."

"Who do you fight? The war is over, and I'm not turning mercenary, even for room and board in a mansion."

There followed an uncomfortable silence, and then Jan sighed. "You and Tony must have really got off on the wrong foot." She patted Steve's arm. "I bet you're hungry. That always makes Hank cranky. Tony was so excited about you, he hasn't eaten anything, either. Boys! Hank, it's your turn to cook."

"Fine, I'll go fix something," Hank said. He left the compartment, which helped to make it feel a little less cramped.

"Cranky?" Steve hadn't been called that since he was a child, laid up in bed for weeks at a time.

"Crabby?" Jan suggested. "Grouchy? Peevish?" She was grinning, and it was infectious. "Crotchety?"

Steve laughed. "All right, I might have been a little out of sorts. I don't do well in tight places," he admitted.

"Ah," Thor said. "I understand. A man of action requires room to swing his weapon."

Steve wondered if Thor realized how suggestive that sounded. Judging by Jan's giggle, she felt the same way. Jan put a hand on Thor's chest. "Why don't you go talk to Tony? He's sulking, I'm sure of it."

Thor nodded. "I shall disperse the airs of gloom that surround our leader!" he announced and strode out of the compartment.

Steve watched Thor go. "Is he joking?"

"You get used to Thor. He's a sweetheart, really. They all are." She hopped up onto the metal slab, sitting so her eyes were on a level with Steve's. "Of course, we all have our histories and we joke a lot to cover them." She looked down at her costume, smoothing the fabric. "We're not mercenaries. Hank's wife was murdered by the secret police in Hungary, which made him want to fight bad guys. My father was a scientist, too, so we knew Hank. And when my father was murdered by an alien from another dimension, I asked him to help. He made me the Wasp." She smiled. "Hank is...well, we're partners, you know?"

Steve nodded. "How did the rest of you get together?"

"Thor has a brother." Jan scowled. "He's trouble, worse than trouble, and he's jealous of Thor. Their daddy liked Thor best, I guess. He'd sent him to Earth to learn how to be humble." Jan laughed. "He's still working on that. Well, anyway, Loki tricked Hulk into smashing up things so Thor would come to fight Hulk. Hulk has friends who radioed the Fantastic Four; oh, you'll just love them, they make us seem normal! We found out later that Loki diverted the message to Thor. Tony and Hank have all this scientific stuff, so they got the message, too. We all went to try to calm down the big guy, and met Thor, who figured out Loki was behind it, so we joined forces. It worked so well that we decided to stay together. Tony offered his mansion as our headquarters, and set up a foundation to pay the expenses. We don't stay with Tony for the money, but it helps us do things we couldn't do. We can protect a lot more people by working together."

Steve nodded. "And Tony?"

"He was making weapons for the military, following in his father's footsteps. He got blown up by one of his own mines in Viet Nam."

Steve didn't interrupt, but he was sorry to hear that while his war had ended, it hadn't ended war.

"He was captured and from what little he'd say, it was pretty nasty. He built the first Iron Man and escaped. I think if he could, he would have kept Iron Man a secret identity, but when a one-eyed hero in armor appears at the same time as the return of a one-eyed millionaire inventive genius it gets splashed all over the newspapers."

"He could have got a normal glass eye. His scar doesn't show through the slits in the helmet."

"I don't know why he didn't do that. Stubbornness, I suppose. He'd already made himself an eye, one that functioned better than his original, and the only thing holding him back was that he didn't trust a surgeon to implant it. Then he met Thor, and Thor's doctor other half."

"Damn, I was going to tell Steve that was a dueling scar."

Steve and Jan looked up. Tony was leaning in the doorway. He wasn't wearing the armor, but his shirt had a neatly hemmed round cut out surrounding a blue glowing circle of glass set in metal. Set in metal in his chest.

Jan hopped off the metal slab. "And how long have you been listening?"

"My ship, I get to listen as long I want." Tony smirked.

"Eavesdroppers never hear well of themselves!" She went over to Tony, and stood on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. "Play nice, Tony. Steve's still a bit shell-shocked."

Tony smiled at Jan. "I'll be good."

Jan blew Steve a kiss and then left.

"Sorry," Tony said. "I should have made allowances."

"I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions." Steve waved at Tony's chest. "What's that do?"

"Oh, this little thing?" Tony came further into the room, right up to Steve. "Powers my suit. Keeps my heart from breaking." His mouth quirked up. "Wanna feel?" He took Steve's hand and pressed it against the glass.

"It's warm," Steve commented.

"I know. It's a surprise. So many people think Tony Stark is cold-hearted." Tony's eyes slipped down and to the side, before returning to gaze directly into Steve's face. "It's a useful reputation."

Steve got the distinct idea Tony was flirting with him. It made him feel... warm. He smiled. "It's not so useful among friends."

"Friends? Are we that?"

"I think we could be." He stroked his fingers around the metal circle, exploring a tracery of raised scars.

"I'd like that," Tony said softly. "I'd like that a lot, Steve."