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cap_ironman2009-12-27 10:58 pm
otherhazards.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2009-12-27 10:58 pm
Entry tags:
Fic: Juke Box Hero (Chapter 1)
Title: Juke Box Hero (Chapter 1)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
otherhazards
Disclaimer: Neither the Marvel characters in this nor the song titles, lyrics, or artists used are mine, but they sure are fun to borrow.
Rating: PG-13
Universe: AU set in early 1970’s New York. Differs from 616 canon in that Tony inherited Stark Industries at age 18 rather than 21, and lost the company to Sunset Bain and his cousin Morgan Stark by the time he was 22. All other differences are butterfly-effect collateral from this.
Warnings: Possible OOC (see above)
Pairing/Characters: Steve/Tony preslash. (Co-starring Peter Parker, Danny Rand, Luke Cage, Unicorn, The Whirlwind, Matt Murdock, and Ozzy Osborne.)
Summary: Two very different veterans return home to Greenwich Village.
=============================================================
The Iron Horse Garage, Greenwich Village NYC, 1970.
Tony unzipped his grease-stained blue coveralls, and stepped out of them.
He walked up to the neon glow of the red and yellow jukebox against the back wall in just his boxers, and pressed ‘F-11-PLAY’ on the selector keypad.
Drums marked time intangibly for four quick beats, then crashed into a hard, steady rhythm with the guitar. The chords cut backwards and forwards through the vocalist’s wordless intro cry, reverberating off the cluttered garage walls.
‘COINS-I’, Tony typed.
Another cry, ripped up and framed by the steady, rough edged guitar.
He hit ‘I-PLAY’, and stepped back.
The actual lyrics to Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song’ began, and the red and yellow jukebox’s gleaming face separated into three pieces. The half-circle at the top pivoted upwards, and the bottom halves swung apart sideways.
Smiling, Tony reached inside for his armor.
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 1:45 PM.
“Okay, I’ll ask it,” Peter said, eyeing the string of red plastic disks that hung suspended from the garage ceiling like a bizarre clothesline, “-what’s with all the hole-punched Frisbees?”
“That’s how many repulsor disks I’ve gone through,” Tony replied, without looking up from the paperwork strewn across his battered brown desk.
“Really? Are those easy to make?” Peter asked, eagerly.
“PETER, for fuck’s sake, I’m busy. Go away,” Tony entreated.
“Why are there so many entries in red?”
“Go away before I squash you!” Tony snarled.
“Oh, that’s original,” Peter muttered, reading over Tony’s shoulder anyway.
Tony took the ensuing silence for the blessing it was, and ignored him.
After a minute, Peter frowned, and picked up two of the invoices.
“HEY-!” Tony objected, grabbing for them.
Peter evaded him by clinging to the ceiling, and laid the papers back down on the desk a moment later, one partially overlapping the other. He pointed out two numbers, one on the page dated in February, and the other on the page dated in April. The invoices were otherwise identical, but the numbers didn’t match. Some clever soul at the motorcycle parts company had made a slight ‘error’ with the decimal point in April, turning an eleven into one hundred and ten. Tony’s eyes flicked quickly from one page to the other.
“You’re hired,” Tony said, flatly.
“I’m in high school,” Peter pointed out, “-and from the looks of these I doubt you could pay me right now anyway.”
“I’ll make you breakfast,” Tony offered.
“That’s not some weird double-entendre, is it? Because if it is-” Peter began, reddening.
“Heh. -No,” Tony laughed, “-you look way too much like I did ten years ago.”
“Why does that not make me feel better?...” Peter muttered, under his breath.
“Look, this isn’t complicated,” Tony grinned, “-you sort out my books until I can make enough of a profit on this place that I can pay you. Until then, I’ll make you breakfast.”
Peter hesitated.
He could tell Tony was using the word ‘books’ loosely, and that this was going to be one HELL of an undertaking. He was good with math, but catching the decimal point had been a fluke, a lucky break... Then again, if he COULD turn this place around, a little extra cash would help out aunt May a lot, and his superpowers -did- take an unreasonable amount of food to maintain...
“I’ll do it,” Peter agreed.
Tony clapped him on the back cheerfully, shuffled the coffee-stained papers together into a rough stack, and slapped them into Peter’s hands.
“Best of luck, Pete.”
-
Dimly-lit warehouse, NYC, 7:20 PM, 1971.
“-Sure you will.”
Iron Man’s repulsor ray hit Unicorn dead center, and knocked him back into a stack of empty blue barrels. A laser blast passed smoking through one ricocheting barrel, and shattered the warehouse windows above Iron Man’s head, bathing him in flying glass.
On the other side of the warehouse, Spider Man was muttering expressions his aunt would have frowned upon, and tearing at the twisted cords of webbing that the Whirlwind had blown him back into with his fingers. Good thing the quick-whirling thug had a fondness for monologueing, or he could have gotten clean away by now...
A thought struck Spider Man, and he snagged one of the scattering blue barrels with a web-line. He swung it wide, aiming towards but not -at- his opponent. Whirlwind took the bait, and spun easily out of range... right into Spider Man’s second web line. The crook rolled up the line fast- -too fast, leaving the ground with a startled yell on sheer momentum and wrapping himself up the web-line like a yo-yo on a string. Spider Man managed to release the web in time to avoid being wrapped up WITH his opponent, but the hurtling man collided with him in mid-air, knocking both of them to the floor.
Iron Man, meanwhile, had just duct-taped a small side-view mirror from the crooks’ getaway truck snugly to the front of Unicorn’s forehead-laser. He kept a heavy armored boot on Unicorn’s chest, and looked up to see how Spider Man was doing.
Peter was standing on one foot beside an angrily wobbling blue barrel, and pulling thickly-wrapped strands of sticky webbing off his right foot with annoyance.
Iron Man smirked behind his faceplate, and finished duct-taping Unicorn’s hands and feet together. His helmet radio crackled to life.
“Crrrcrrrkck- -on Man, come in?”
“Iron Man here. What’s up, Powers?” Tony replied, pressing a flat button on the side of his helmet.
“The Avengers found Captain America,” Luke told him.
“Oh, god...” Tony sighed, shutting his eyes, “-I didn’t even know he’d gotten loose.”
“No, man. You ain’t hearing me,” Luke cut across Tony’s darkening thoughts, “-the Avengers found Cap. The REAL deal. -Alive.”
Tony was silent.
“Are they sure?” He asked, after a moment.
“Yeah, Mister Fantastic just finished checkin’ ‘im out,” Luke confirmed, “-s’all over the news. I gotta go, man...”
“Right. -Thank you.” Tony replied, automatically.
He let his finger off the button, and just... stood for a moment.
Tony remembered the Captain America poster he’d had on his wall as a kid.
He remembered the first time some scum-sucker in SpecOps command had thought it would be a good idea to defrost the 1950’s ersatz Captain America.
He remembered the battle that followed- -one of his earliest as Iron Man- -and the hate and confusion in the eyes of a drug-poisoned schoolteacher when he had finally taken the madman down.
...Tony still had nightmares about that one.
He remembered doing a history report in college before he’d ever dreamed of the armor, and thinking that Cap, Union Jack, and the Invaders seemed to belong to an age different than the history moving around them. ...The time of King Arthur’s round table, perhaps.
Tony knew that whether the man the Avengers had found had been the real Captain America or not, the government was probably already re-writing him.
It was a tragedy, and a waste, and a corruption of-
“Hey- -hey, Iron Man?” Spider Man broke in, loping up to him.
“Yeah Spider, what is it?” Tony answered, absently.
“Power Man called,” Peter tapped his Spider-comm, “They just found the original Captain America. ...Wouldn’t he be really old by now?”
“Fifties, maybe. I- -I don’t know,” Tony replied, somewhat distantly.
“Why do you think he never came forward before?” Peter pressed. “-Do you think he still has his Super-Soldier powers, or would that have-“
“Spider, your barrel’s trying to roll away.”
“HEY!” Spider Man pinned the barrel holding the Whirlwind to the warehouse floor with a web-net.
“Wait, did you just say dey found Captain America?” Unicorn asked, from the floor.
“Yeah, so when you go off to jail this time, you might want to think about a career change,” Spider Man advised him.
Unicorn’s only response was a defeated sigh, but Tony’s brow furrowed slightly.
Something was happening here. Something big. He could feel it coming like he’d felt the long shadow of the Cuban missile crisis...
...Only this time it felt more like the rising sun.
-
Disused railway yard on the outskirts of NYC, 3:30 PM
Iron Man wasn’t getting up.
The rest of the battle had moved elsewhere, fortunately...
Steve’s stride broke into a run, and he reached the fallen figure in seconds. He’d been right, Iron Man wasn’t a robot. Somewhere inside that suit of armor- -a red and gold affair that would have done Flash Gordon proud- -there was a living man. From the sound of his breathing there might not be for very much longer, unless...
“Iron Man? Can you hear me?!” Steve demanded, shaking him by the shoulder.
No voice emerged, but one of the red-gauntleted hands seemed to be trying to pry open the armor’s breastplate. There was no visible catch though, and it was locked fast.
Something about the breastplate’s shape reminded Steve of...
He couldn’t put his finger on what -exactly-, but he reached down on instinct, pressed in a hidden catch beneath the breastplate’s left side seam, and pulled it forward.
The armor plate unlocked and swung open on its left-hand hinge... just like the hood of his old friend Arnie’s father’s car.
Steve allowed himself a small smile, looked down into the interior of the suit and- stopped. The inner side of the breastplate looked nothing like the plain welded and painted steel of the exterior. It was a carpet of circuits, insulation, power busses, transistors, and things Steve couldn’t -begin- to guess at the function of...
But that wasn’t what stopped him. Set into the center of Iron Man’s otherwise very Human-looking chest like the lens of a large magnifying glass, was a device like Steve had never seen before.
It looked as though a thunderstorm had been captured in a shallow, steel-bound glass jar, and implanted in him. The lightning within was flickering powerfully but sporadically, and the device was clearly malfunctioning in some way...
Was it a battery? An engine?
Never mind.
He had to get that thing working again, or Iron Man was dead.
“-Cap...?” Iron Man managed, when he finished coughing.
“You’re all right now,” Steve smiled, helping his still-unsteady ally sit up in the unpowered suit of armor.
Color was returning to Iron Man’s sharp-lined face beneath its layer of five o’clock shadow, and the blackness of his damp hair and Errol Flynn mustache was beginning to stand out less unnaturally.
Iron Man frowned for a moment, then glanced down at the brightly glowing device in his chest, and started violently. He -stared- at it, and half-raised one hand.
“Sustained reaction...” he breathed, “-but... that’s impossible, it would take over fifty thou-” Iron Man grabbed the front of Steve’s scale-mail shirt by the star. “-What did you just shock me with?!”
“Those,” Cap pointed to two loose ends of heavy cable ripped out of the gray metal box on a nearby railway signal light post.
Tony saw the cables, and then noticed that the markings on the pulled cables and the signal-light cables didn’t match, though both -were- black. His eyes followed the pipe housing the main electrical bundle down the tracks, and fixed on a small gray building off to one side marked with a ‘Danger: high voltage’ sign.
Tony turned back to Cap with a look that made Steve wonder if he was about to get punched in the face.
Then he yanked down on Steve’s shirt a few more inches, and kissed him deeply.
“-Thanks,” Tony sighed happily, some four or five startled seconds later.
“Weh... I... ...You’re all right now,” Steve repeated, as if that made sense. His face was probably close to the color of Iron Man’s -breastplate-...
Power Man and Iron Fist arrived at a dead run.
“Is he all right?” Danny asked, relaxing after he saw Iron Man look up.
Neither of the other two seemed to be surprised by the sight of Iron Man’s unmasked face, Cap noticed, so it was a good bet the three of them had worked together before.
Iron Man looked up at Steve again, and for a staring second Steve wondered if he was about to be kissed a second time... but Iron Man made no move.
“I’m good,” he smiled instead.
“...Heah we go again...” Luke muttered, just loud enough for Steve’s Super-Soldier hearing to catch.
-
Matt Murdock’s apartment, Hell’s Kitchen NYC, 10:10 PM.
“-Return you to the madmen of metal, broadcasting live here tonight from Madison Square Gardennnn... BLACK SABBATH!!!!!”
Matt Murdock pulled on the red leather gloves of his Daredevil costume, and listened approvingly to an intro that sounded like the awakening growl of a robot that could stomp Tokyo.
“--I am Iron Man!”
Matt -stopped-, and turned to face the radio.
“-Has he- -lost his mind-?”
‘He will when he hears this...’ Matt thought, to himself.
“-Can he see or is he blind? Can he- -walk at all? Or if he moves will he fall-?”
‘That depends on a lot of factors,’ Matt thought, smirking as he pulled on his mask.
“Is he- -alive or dead? Has he thoughts within his head? We'll just- -pass him there Why should we even care?-”
‘Because somebody has to...’ Matt thought, frowning a little.
The song played on, taking darker and darker turns until ‘Iron Man’ became the villain. It was too bad, Matt reflected. Tony liked heavy metal, and he was probably listening. With his hand on the door, Matt’s enhanced hearing caught something else the band’s microphones were picking up that wasn’t -quite static.
Bootjets.
Tony was THERE, at the concert, AS Iron Man.
...Sweet Jesus.
The faint rushing noise grew louder, and over the last few chords of the song, a sudden primal roar went up from the crowd. Matt swallowed. The DJ swore on-air.
“--I have GOT to be going out o’ my fucking mind! Do yew people see this? Are yew fucking seeing this?!” Ozzy screamed.
More, and louder screaming, though less outright terrified now. A heavy clang, and the bootjets cut out.
“Speak of the devil and he shall appear...” Ozzy said, “-I haven’t pissed you off then, ‘ave I?”
“Whatever gave you that idea?” Iron man asked, over an ominous crackle of electricity.
The crowd screamed again.
“...Easy-” Ozzy began, not quite into the microphone.
The crackling shut off.
“Just kidding, man. You guys kicked -BLEEP-,” Iron Man laughed.
“You son of a bitch,” Matt said, with a sigh of relief.
“So you’re not ‘ere to blow us away? Are you quite sure about that? -Because you owe me one pair of trousers already, you -BLEEEEP-.”
“Yeah, I’m sure- -IF we can come to some arrangement about you taking my name in vain back there...” Iron Man qualified.
“What did you ‘ave in mind?” Ozzy asked, “-because if it’s my soul you’re after, that’s otherwise engaged.”
There was an upsurge of laughter and approving cat-calls from the crowd.
“Well, let’s start with your John Hancock on this,” Iron Man said.
“Ab-so-lutely.” ...A permanent marker squeaked over what sounded like a small plate of Iron Man’s armor. “-You know, you’re not ‘alf bad when you’re not out knocking down buildings...”
“That’d be less of a problem if the bad guys stopped trying to knock me INTO buildings,” Iron Man pointed out, dryly.
“-Then why don’t you leave ‘em alone, you establishment PIG?” Somebody yelled, from the audience.
“You got something to say to me?” Iron Man challenged, “-sound off again punk, loud and proud!”
“You’re a joke, Iron Man! An’ any joker could win a street-fight in a suit of super-powered armor! Who are you to judge? You don’t know what real combat MEANS!”
“Vietnam, right?” Iron Man guessed, calmly.
“Yeah man, I was THERE!” the heckler yelled back, angrily.
“-So was I,” Iron Man cut him off.
There was a beat or two of dead air, with only the soft crackle of microphone static.
“...Is that suit Army?” The heckler asked, mollified but still wary.
“Yeah! Where was my -BLEEP- battle suit?” Someone else in the audience demanded.
“I didn’t get this from Uncle Sam,” Iron Man assured him, “-but about what you said earlier,” he began, raising his voice, “-you asked me ‘why don’t I leave ‘em alone?’”
“-Yeah!”
“I can’t do that because I’m NOT -BLEEP- blind!” Iron Man shouted back.
“Oh, -thanks-...” Matt muttered philosophically.
“-When I see a bunch of super-powered -thugs- tearing a strip offa my city while your ‘establishment’s’ BACK is turned, it just kinda pisses me OFF!” Iron Man snarled, “-you can’t just ignore -BLEEP- like that, that’s how it gets bad! WE can do BETTER than that! We’ve got to!”
This got an answering cheer of approval, though it was by no means universal.
“...An’ besides, the day I need a reason to get inta THIS suit an’ fly, somebody better -BLEEP- bury me, because I will be a -BLEEP- flatliner!” Iron Man declared with what sounded like a grin, and the unibeam on his armor crackled momentarily without firing.
A -much- better cheer greeted that one.
“Now shut up and let this crazy man sing...” Iron Man ordered.
There was a slight squelch of static, and a metallic clink from one of Ozzy’s rings as he took the mic back.
“Thank you, thank you... all right, so I may have gotten a few o’ the details wrong, but don’t fly off and trash the place!- -Now this next one is one yew all may recognize, and if you don’t then -BLEEP- you anyway...”
Matt smirked and left to go on patrol, leaving the radio playing.
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 12:25 PM (next day).
“AH-! Friggin’christ!”
Tony put a hand to the bass-beat of pain in his forehead, and bent down to pick up the Ford wrench he’d just dropped.
At least Peter wouldn’t be coming in today...
Goddamn sun, and dawn’s early light in general.
Okay, so it was actually half past noon, but... at... at what -point- in history had people decided to do business in the daytime? Seriously... It was outmoded. Antediluvian. Should have gone out with corsets and Thomas Edison. Actually, corsets could stay. But daytime operation was ridiculous... Even computers thought better in the cool of night, so why wouldn’t a-
“Anybody home?” A vaguely familiar voice called from the open garage door.
Tony’s head came up, and struck the underside of a classic truck’s hood with completely unnecessary force.
“OW!!!- -god... hangonasecond...” Tony staggered back a step, and held onto the corner of the engine compartment with one white-knuckled hand until he could open his eyes again.
His sunglasses had fallen off, and he was looking straight into the clear blue eyes of Captain America for the second time. And they really -were- blue, like the sky at forty thousand feet, while his...
Tony didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
He swallowed slightly, instead.
“Hi again,” Tony said, and instantly started fishing for his lost sunglasses under the truck’s radiator.
Cap, like Tony, was in civvies today. He wore nondescript blue jeans, brown steel toed boots, a butter yellow button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a blindingly white t-shirt underneath it. Over one arm, he carried a brown leather bomber jacket with an eagle on the back. Cap looked fantastic, but how he’d gotten out the door of the Avengers’ mansion looking like a refugee of the early fifties without Janet Van Dyne waylaying him for his own good, Tony had no idea.
“Are you all right?” Cap asked.
“Yeah, I-” -sunglasses, finally- “-I just hit the um... ...what can I do for you?” Tony asked, slipping his sunglasses back on.
“...I was wondering if you’d take a look at my motorbike,” Cap replied still eyeing him with concern.
Huh, thought Tony, -Captain America- was the one who actually brought his motorbike in.
That figured, in a weird, karmic-debt sort of way...
“Sure thing. What’s wrong with it?” Tony asked, straightening and wiping his hands on the thighs of his green coveralls.
“Well, I just got it, and I’m not sure the adjustment on the clutch is right,” Cap said aloud, but passed Tony a handwritten note with a significant look. ‘Sweep for radio-transmitter’, the note said.
“-I can take care of that. Bring it on inside,” Tony nodded knowingly, stuffing the note in his pocket. Steve did so, and Tony pulled the rolling garage door down.
The bike was beautiful, of course.
An early-model Harley-Davidson Panhead with a gas tank the same shade as the blue on Cap’s shield, and fittings of untouched, glowing chrome.
Tony took out the tools he would have needed for a clutch adjustment to make the performance sound better, and grabbed a pencil from the coffee can by the phone.
‘Blew it with the ‘hi again’. What do I call you out of costume?’ Tony wrote, and handed the paper and pencil over. He crossed the room, took a medium-sized wooden box out of a metal parts cabinet, and unpacked it on the floor beside the Harley, revealing several horrifically complex-looking electronic scanners.
Cap handed him the notepaper and pencil back.
‘I’m Steve Rogers’, the note said.
Tony started to write his own name in return, but the pencil lead broke about halfway up the exposed point, so the lines of ‘Tony Stark’ looked a lot darker and choppier.
Steve underlined ‘Tony’, and gave him an inquiring look.
Tony nodded approvingly, and wrote back, ‘play with my tools while I do this’.
Steve smiled, amused, but nodded shrewdly.
-Of course. The man had been trained in counter-espionage, after all...
Tony began his scans.
Steve put his jacket down, found a clean red rag in a bin by the small pneumatic air compressor, and started wiping down the tools in Tony’s big red roll-around toolbox.
Tony frowned slightly at the LCD screen of the device in his hand. He hadn’t meant those tools. They were already cleaned and oiled anyway...
“It’s good to see you again,” Steve said.
Tony looked up, smiled, and went back to his scan.
“You too, Steve.”
“That wasn’t the sort of party where you stop to chat, but I’d meant to ask you earlier- -what’s that device you have...?” Steve drew a circle in the air in front of his own chest.
“Oh, this-?” Tony glanced down the front of his nominally white A-line, and tapped the scratched black cover that hid his arc reactor from public view. “-It’s a battery for my pacemaker. I took some shrapnel in ‘Nam, and this keeps my heart beating unless I forget to charge it,” he joked.
Steve gave him a doubtful look.
Tony shrugged, and then nodded that yes, he was serious.
He’d also found the first of the bugs on the bike already, snugged up under the frame itself just beneath the Harley’s gas tank. -It had been hard to pin down because it was using the entire frame as a transmitter.
Tony motioned Steve over, and pointed.
Steve felt around carefully under the tank where Tony was pointing, then nodded silently.
Tony pantomimed ripping something out of the bike.
Steve shook his head, and made a ‘sit tight’ downwards motion with one hand.
Tony nodded, and continued his sweep.
Steve stood, and examined some of the eclectic clutter on the garage walls.
He saw assorted hubcaps, hanging coils of thick copper electrical wire, a framed poster of a B-24 bomber in flight, a perfect steel gear the size of a dinner-plate, and several mechanical parts that didn’t seem to go to -anything-. There was a classic hot-rod calendar, heavily annotated in black permanent marker... one scrawl, written sideways on the picture and carefully avoiding the pinup-car itself, looked like some form of complex mathematical notation.
The thing that held Steve’s eye though, was a snapshot of Tony himself, standing with his copilot and a handful of other soldiers by the open door of a green helicopter.
“You were a Captain,” Steve observed, looking back over his shoulder with a wry grin.
“Yeah, I was,” Tony replied, with an ‘eat-shit-and-die’ one.
“-Only made it to PFC, myself,” Steve said, turning back towards the picture.
Tony snapped his fingers.
Steve turned around.
Tony pointed back towards the toolbox, and made a ‘get rolling’ motion with one hand.
“So I guess that means you outrank me,” Steve said with a grin, picking up where he’d left off on his tool-cleaning.
Tony snorted, but smiled, looking back down at his scanner. Something wasn’t adding up. He had isolated the bug on the bike and filtered that frequency out, but the scanner was still picking up a signal from somewhe-
Oh for god’s sake... they DIDN’T...
Tony got up, and paced around the garage floor backwards and forwards for a moment, eyes fixed on the screen of the gray scanner in his outstretched hand, as if he was dancing with it. Forward... back... over... ...-there-.
Tony walked up to Steve, and stopped. He passed the scanner through the air in front of Steve’s body slowly, glaring at the readout in ferocious triumph when the indicator light on the device’s side switched from yellow to red.
Steve blinked, clearly disturbed.
Tony moved Steve’s arms up by his wrists, and scanned him again. He stopped just beneath Steve’s left arm, and pointed.
Steve’s face hardened in a way Tony -never- wanted to see directed at him, and Steve took off both of his civilian shirts. Underneath was a glittering expanse of blue scale-mail, with Cap’s white star displayed proudly in the center. Steve shrugged out of the leather straps of his shield, and set the large disk down against the toolbox beside him.
Tony tightened his scan, and began searching under individual scales one by one, like a small animal searching under the leaves of a plant for insects.
Four scales up from the lower edge of Steve’s armor and along the seam of the blue leather underneath, Tony found his bug. He lifted the scale up and held it there with one forefinger, showing Steve the tiny transmitter hidden in a groove on the underside.
Steve stared at it for a long moment, then nodded. Tony turned back to his scanner, programmed it to filter out the second signal, and gave Steve a thumbs-up.
Aside from what they’d already found, Steve and his motorcycle were clean.
Tony left Steve to finish putting himself back together, and returned to the Harley.
He tapped twice on the clutch with a black-handled screwdriver.
“Yeah, I think that should do it,” he said, “-just go easy until you finish breaking it in.”
“Thank you, Tony,” Steve said, in a tone that was just a shade too sincere for a man simply talking to his mechanic.
Tony began putting his scanning equipment back in its box.
“Do you want a beer?” He asked, without looking up.
“...Yeah, I think I could use one,” Steve admitted, tucking his shirt back into his jeans.
”Me too. They’re in that fridge over by the drill-press,” Tony said, indicating the appropriate direction with a nod.
“What’s the other refrigerator for?” Steve couldn’t help asking.
“It’s a freezer,” Tony replied, without really explaining anything.
Steve took out two beer bottles, and handed Tony one of them. Tony popped the cap off with a practiced twist, drank, and set the bottle down on the concrete floor while he finished putting the rest of his tools away.
-When his headache had begun to fade he wasn’t sure, but it was almost gone now.
“You know, I only know one song on this entire list,” Steve said, from over by the jukebox.
“Sinatra, right?” Tony called over.
“Uh-huh,” Steve replied, still studying the other titles.
“-He’s the kind that lasts,” Tony shrugged, shutting his toolbox.
“Did all these records come with the jukebox when you bought it?” Steve asked.
“No, most of the bands weren’t even around when I got this,” Tony said, patting one of the jukebox’s polished fairings.
“May I?”
“Go ahead.”
“Where do I start?”
“Anywhere you want, but mothers have been chucking out most of these records for decades,” Tony promised.
“I’ll start at the end, then,” Steve decided, and pressed 'G-12-PLAY'.
At first he wasn’t sure the record was being played at all, because it started with a soft, regular mechanical noise, almost like the very faint beat of a helicopter blade. Then a slow ripple of cymbals, and a clear, meditative guitar began. Hide-headed drums, like he’d heard in North Africa while countering one of Rommel’s agents...
‘This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end-‘
It was haunting. Half-foreign music with American-accented words, and suddenly Steve’s mind was churning, throwing him back to the last moment he’d seen Bucky before his grip on the plane slipped, the way rising panic had swamped the courage and irrational trust in the boy’s eyes at the last-
‘Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again’
...Good grief. How had things gotten this bad? How could the chilling, hopeless feeling that had swamped his heart at that fatal moment he’d let go... have become a modern pop song?
‘Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need...of some...stranger's hand
In a...desperate land’
The song played on, but the lyrics became confusing, and Steve couldn’t re-engage with it. When the music trailed off into a montage of crickets, night-birds and distant sirens, Steve looked over at Tony, who was watching his face with concern.
“You done with this one?” Tony asked.
“I- -yes.”
“Good. Try this one,” Tony said, and pressed 'B-3-PLAY'. Quickly.
Elvis’s ‘Rock a Hula Baby’ started.
That got a smile from Steve, as Tony had intended it to. -There were very few people who couldn’t at least laugh at B-3.
Tony listened too, watching Steve’s reaction with satisfaction, and moving slightly with the music.
‘Although I love to kiss my little hula miss
I never get the chance
I wanna hold her tight all through the night
But all she wants to do is dance-’
Okay, -that- part was unfortunate, Tony reflected, though strangely apropos considering...
The song finished. Tony took a pull on his beer.
“I like that one,” Steve decided, smiling a little.
“Me too,” Tony smiled back.
“What was the first one about?” Steve asked.
Tony chewed on his lower lip for a moment, considering.
“War and sex,” he decided.
Steve looked at him thoughtfully.
“You’re not going to lie to me at all, are you?”
“-What?” Tony blinked.
“I’ve been getting the runaround from a lot of people lately,” Steve said, casting a disapproving glance at his bugged motorcycle, “-and you just gave me a straight answer.”
Define straight, Tony thought self-consciously.
“Do you want me to stop?” He asked, aloud.
“No. Tell me about Vietnam. I’ve never really understood that conflict.”
“‘Conflict’, huh?” Tony said, dryly. “-It’s... basically a pissing match with the Red Chinese that got away from us, though you’d never guess that from what the newspapers print. Here, just- -listen.” Tony pressed 'D-1-PLAY'.
‘I got a letter from LBJ
It said this is your lucky day
It’s time to put your khaki trousers on
Though it may seem very queer
We’ve got no job to give you here
So we are sending you to Vietnam...
Lynden Johnson told the nation
Have no fear of escalation
I am trying everyone to please
Though it isn’t really war
We’re sending fifty thousand more
To help save Vietnam from Vietnamese...’
‘Lynden Johnson Told the Nation’ played through, and Steve listened with mounting consternation.
“But- -That doesn’t make any sense-!” he protested, when it was over.
“-Now-,” Tony tilted his beer bottle in the direction of his guest, “-you’re getting it.”
Steve was magnificent, angry.
He got up, and paced a few turns. He killed half his beer in one shot without seeming to notice, and held the neck of the bottle between his first and second fingers, forgotten.
Tony finished his beer, and pressed 'F-2-PLAY'.
Zeppelin’s ‘The Battle of Evermore’ began.
The melody was strange, almost like folk music, and it seemed more of a framework to hang the lyrics -on- than an accompaniment... But the words began to tell a story of heroes, and after the first few lines, Steve was listening.
It was strange. Both songs had been about war, yet he was hopeful this one would end differently. Less fashionably, by having the good guys win.
A hero, who walked in shadow. A great war, and troops called up. The angels of Avalon- -why did that make him think of Spitfire? A tyrant, whose face was red. -Boy, did that strike home...
And it seemed to be- -was- -about heroes, some of whom could fly.
“That was recent, wasn’t it?” Steve guessed when the song finished.
“Yes, it was,” Tony replied, pleased at the deduction.
“By ring-wraiths, were they talking about the Mandarin’s henchmen?” Steve asked.
“W- not that I know of. Most of the imagery is from a fantasy novel. ...I just wanted to play you something where the good guys didn’t get screwed,” Tony grinned.
“A fantasy novel?” Steve asked, interested.
“‘The Lord of the Rings’. -It’s a trilogy, actually. I’ve got the first two books around here somewhere...” Tony began.
---
-tbc-
Author:
otherhazards Disclaimer: Neither the Marvel characters in this nor the song titles, lyrics, or artists used are mine, but they sure are fun to borrow.
Rating: PG-13
Universe: AU set in early 1970’s New York. Differs from 616 canon in that Tony inherited Stark Industries at age 18 rather than 21, and lost the company to Sunset Bain and his cousin Morgan Stark by the time he was 22. All other differences are butterfly-effect collateral from this.
Warnings: Possible OOC (see above)
Pairing/Characters: Steve/Tony preslash. (Co-starring Peter Parker, Danny Rand, Luke Cage, Unicorn, The Whirlwind, Matt Murdock, and Ozzy Osborne.)
Summary: Two very different veterans return home to Greenwich Village.
=============================================================
The Iron Horse Garage, Greenwich Village NYC, 1970.
Tony unzipped his grease-stained blue coveralls, and stepped out of them.
He walked up to the neon glow of the red and yellow jukebox against the back wall in just his boxers, and pressed ‘F-11-PLAY’ on the selector keypad.
Drums marked time intangibly for four quick beats, then crashed into a hard, steady rhythm with the guitar. The chords cut backwards and forwards through the vocalist’s wordless intro cry, reverberating off the cluttered garage walls.
‘COINS-I’, Tony typed.
Another cry, ripped up and framed by the steady, rough edged guitar.
He hit ‘I-PLAY’, and stepped back.
The actual lyrics to Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song’ began, and the red and yellow jukebox’s gleaming face separated into three pieces. The half-circle at the top pivoted upwards, and the bottom halves swung apart sideways.
Smiling, Tony reached inside for his armor.
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 1:45 PM.
“Okay, I’ll ask it,” Peter said, eyeing the string of red plastic disks that hung suspended from the garage ceiling like a bizarre clothesline, “-what’s with all the hole-punched Frisbees?”
“That’s how many repulsor disks I’ve gone through,” Tony replied, without looking up from the paperwork strewn across his battered brown desk.
“Really? Are those easy to make?” Peter asked, eagerly.
“PETER, for fuck’s sake, I’m busy. Go away,” Tony entreated.
“Why are there so many entries in red?”
“Go away before I squash you!” Tony snarled.
“Oh, that’s original,” Peter muttered, reading over Tony’s shoulder anyway.
Tony took the ensuing silence for the blessing it was, and ignored him.
After a minute, Peter frowned, and picked up two of the invoices.
“HEY-!” Tony objected, grabbing for them.
Peter evaded him by clinging to the ceiling, and laid the papers back down on the desk a moment later, one partially overlapping the other. He pointed out two numbers, one on the page dated in February, and the other on the page dated in April. The invoices were otherwise identical, but the numbers didn’t match. Some clever soul at the motorcycle parts company had made a slight ‘error’ with the decimal point in April, turning an eleven into one hundred and ten. Tony’s eyes flicked quickly from one page to the other.
“You’re hired,” Tony said, flatly.
“I’m in high school,” Peter pointed out, “-and from the looks of these I doubt you could pay me right now anyway.”
“I’ll make you breakfast,” Tony offered.
“That’s not some weird double-entendre, is it? Because if it is-” Peter began, reddening.
“Heh. -No,” Tony laughed, “-you look way too much like I did ten years ago.”
“Why does that not make me feel better?...” Peter muttered, under his breath.
“Look, this isn’t complicated,” Tony grinned, “-you sort out my books until I can make enough of a profit on this place that I can pay you. Until then, I’ll make you breakfast.”
Peter hesitated.
He could tell Tony was using the word ‘books’ loosely, and that this was going to be one HELL of an undertaking. He was good with math, but catching the decimal point had been a fluke, a lucky break... Then again, if he COULD turn this place around, a little extra cash would help out aunt May a lot, and his superpowers -did- take an unreasonable amount of food to maintain...
“I’ll do it,” Peter agreed.
Tony clapped him on the back cheerfully, shuffled the coffee-stained papers together into a rough stack, and slapped them into Peter’s hands.
“Best of luck, Pete.”
-
Dimly-lit warehouse, NYC, 7:20 PM, 1971.
“-Sure you will.”
Iron Man’s repulsor ray hit Unicorn dead center, and knocked him back into a stack of empty blue barrels. A laser blast passed smoking through one ricocheting barrel, and shattered the warehouse windows above Iron Man’s head, bathing him in flying glass.
On the other side of the warehouse, Spider Man was muttering expressions his aunt would have frowned upon, and tearing at the twisted cords of webbing that the Whirlwind had blown him back into with his fingers. Good thing the quick-whirling thug had a fondness for monologueing, or he could have gotten clean away by now...
A thought struck Spider Man, and he snagged one of the scattering blue barrels with a web-line. He swung it wide, aiming towards but not -at- his opponent. Whirlwind took the bait, and spun easily out of range... right into Spider Man’s second web line. The crook rolled up the line fast- -too fast, leaving the ground with a startled yell on sheer momentum and wrapping himself up the web-line like a yo-yo on a string. Spider Man managed to release the web in time to avoid being wrapped up WITH his opponent, but the hurtling man collided with him in mid-air, knocking both of them to the floor.
Iron Man, meanwhile, had just duct-taped a small side-view mirror from the crooks’ getaway truck snugly to the front of Unicorn’s forehead-laser. He kept a heavy armored boot on Unicorn’s chest, and looked up to see how Spider Man was doing.
Peter was standing on one foot beside an angrily wobbling blue barrel, and pulling thickly-wrapped strands of sticky webbing off his right foot with annoyance.
Iron Man smirked behind his faceplate, and finished duct-taping Unicorn’s hands and feet together. His helmet radio crackled to life.
“Crrrcrrrkck- -on Man, come in?”
“Iron Man here. What’s up, Powers?” Tony replied, pressing a flat button on the side of his helmet.
“The Avengers found Captain America,” Luke told him.
“Oh, god...” Tony sighed, shutting his eyes, “-I didn’t even know he’d gotten loose.”
“No, man. You ain’t hearing me,” Luke cut across Tony’s darkening thoughts, “-the Avengers found Cap. The REAL deal. -Alive.”
Tony was silent.
“Are they sure?” He asked, after a moment.
“Yeah, Mister Fantastic just finished checkin’ ‘im out,” Luke confirmed, “-s’all over the news. I gotta go, man...”
“Right. -Thank you.” Tony replied, automatically.
He let his finger off the button, and just... stood for a moment.
Tony remembered the Captain America poster he’d had on his wall as a kid.
He remembered the first time some scum-sucker in SpecOps command had thought it would be a good idea to defrost the 1950’s ersatz Captain America.
He remembered the battle that followed- -one of his earliest as Iron Man- -and the hate and confusion in the eyes of a drug-poisoned schoolteacher when he had finally taken the madman down.
...Tony still had nightmares about that one.
He remembered doing a history report in college before he’d ever dreamed of the armor, and thinking that Cap, Union Jack, and the Invaders seemed to belong to an age different than the history moving around them. ...The time of King Arthur’s round table, perhaps.
Tony knew that whether the man the Avengers had found had been the real Captain America or not, the government was probably already re-writing him.
It was a tragedy, and a waste, and a corruption of-
“Hey- -hey, Iron Man?” Spider Man broke in, loping up to him.
“Yeah Spider, what is it?” Tony answered, absently.
“Power Man called,” Peter tapped his Spider-comm, “They just found the original Captain America. ...Wouldn’t he be really old by now?”
“Fifties, maybe. I- -I don’t know,” Tony replied, somewhat distantly.
“Why do you think he never came forward before?” Peter pressed. “-Do you think he still has his Super-Soldier powers, or would that have-“
“Spider, your barrel’s trying to roll away.”
“HEY!” Spider Man pinned the barrel holding the Whirlwind to the warehouse floor with a web-net.
“Wait, did you just say dey found Captain America?” Unicorn asked, from the floor.
“Yeah, so when you go off to jail this time, you might want to think about a career change,” Spider Man advised him.
Unicorn’s only response was a defeated sigh, but Tony’s brow furrowed slightly.
Something was happening here. Something big. He could feel it coming like he’d felt the long shadow of the Cuban missile crisis...
...Only this time it felt more like the rising sun.
-
Disused railway yard on the outskirts of NYC, 3:30 PM
Iron Man wasn’t getting up.
The rest of the battle had moved elsewhere, fortunately...
Steve’s stride broke into a run, and he reached the fallen figure in seconds. He’d been right, Iron Man wasn’t a robot. Somewhere inside that suit of armor- -a red and gold affair that would have done Flash Gordon proud- -there was a living man. From the sound of his breathing there might not be for very much longer, unless...
“Iron Man? Can you hear me?!” Steve demanded, shaking him by the shoulder.
No voice emerged, but one of the red-gauntleted hands seemed to be trying to pry open the armor’s breastplate. There was no visible catch though, and it was locked fast.
Something about the breastplate’s shape reminded Steve of...
He couldn’t put his finger on what -exactly-, but he reached down on instinct, pressed in a hidden catch beneath the breastplate’s left side seam, and pulled it forward.
The armor plate unlocked and swung open on its left-hand hinge... just like the hood of his old friend Arnie’s father’s car.
Steve allowed himself a small smile, looked down into the interior of the suit and- stopped. The inner side of the breastplate looked nothing like the plain welded and painted steel of the exterior. It was a carpet of circuits, insulation, power busses, transistors, and things Steve couldn’t -begin- to guess at the function of...
But that wasn’t what stopped him. Set into the center of Iron Man’s otherwise very Human-looking chest like the lens of a large magnifying glass, was a device like Steve had never seen before.
It looked as though a thunderstorm had been captured in a shallow, steel-bound glass jar, and implanted in him. The lightning within was flickering powerfully but sporadically, and the device was clearly malfunctioning in some way...
Was it a battery? An engine?
Never mind.
He had to get that thing working again, or Iron Man was dead.
“-Cap...?” Iron Man managed, when he finished coughing.
“You’re all right now,” Steve smiled, helping his still-unsteady ally sit up in the unpowered suit of armor.
Color was returning to Iron Man’s sharp-lined face beneath its layer of five o’clock shadow, and the blackness of his damp hair and Errol Flynn mustache was beginning to stand out less unnaturally.
Iron Man frowned for a moment, then glanced down at the brightly glowing device in his chest, and started violently. He -stared- at it, and half-raised one hand.
“Sustained reaction...” he breathed, “-but... that’s impossible, it would take over fifty thou-” Iron Man grabbed the front of Steve’s scale-mail shirt by the star. “-What did you just shock me with?!”
“Those,” Cap pointed to two loose ends of heavy cable ripped out of the gray metal box on a nearby railway signal light post.
Tony saw the cables, and then noticed that the markings on the pulled cables and the signal-light cables didn’t match, though both -were- black. His eyes followed the pipe housing the main electrical bundle down the tracks, and fixed on a small gray building off to one side marked with a ‘Danger: high voltage’ sign.
Tony turned back to Cap with a look that made Steve wonder if he was about to get punched in the face.
Then he yanked down on Steve’s shirt a few more inches, and kissed him deeply.
“-Thanks,” Tony sighed happily, some four or five startled seconds later.
“Weh... I... ...You’re all right now,” Steve repeated, as if that made sense. His face was probably close to the color of Iron Man’s -breastplate-...
Power Man and Iron Fist arrived at a dead run.
“Is he all right?” Danny asked, relaxing after he saw Iron Man look up.
Neither of the other two seemed to be surprised by the sight of Iron Man’s unmasked face, Cap noticed, so it was a good bet the three of them had worked together before.
Iron Man looked up at Steve again, and for a staring second Steve wondered if he was about to be kissed a second time... but Iron Man made no move.
“I’m good,” he smiled instead.
“...Heah we go again...” Luke muttered, just loud enough for Steve’s Super-Soldier hearing to catch.
-
Matt Murdock’s apartment, Hell’s Kitchen NYC, 10:10 PM.
“-Return you to the madmen of metal, broadcasting live here tonight from Madison Square Gardennnn... BLACK SABBATH!!!!!”
Matt Murdock pulled on the red leather gloves of his Daredevil costume, and listened approvingly to an intro that sounded like the awakening growl of a robot that could stomp Tokyo.
“--I am Iron Man!”
Matt -stopped-, and turned to face the radio.
“-Has he- -lost his mind-?”
‘He will when he hears this...’ Matt thought, to himself.
“-Can he see or is he blind? Can he- -walk at all? Or if he moves will he fall-?”
‘That depends on a lot of factors,’ Matt thought, smirking as he pulled on his mask.
“Is he- -alive or dead? Has he thoughts within his head? We'll just- -pass him there Why should we even care?-”
‘Because somebody has to...’ Matt thought, frowning a little.
The song played on, taking darker and darker turns until ‘Iron Man’ became the villain. It was too bad, Matt reflected. Tony liked heavy metal, and he was probably listening. With his hand on the door, Matt’s enhanced hearing caught something else the band’s microphones were picking up that wasn’t -quite static.
Bootjets.
Tony was THERE, at the concert, AS Iron Man.
...Sweet Jesus.
The faint rushing noise grew louder, and over the last few chords of the song, a sudden primal roar went up from the crowd. Matt swallowed. The DJ swore on-air.
“--I have GOT to be going out o’ my fucking mind! Do yew people see this? Are yew fucking seeing this?!” Ozzy screamed.
More, and louder screaming, though less outright terrified now. A heavy clang, and the bootjets cut out.
“Speak of the devil and he shall appear...” Ozzy said, “-I haven’t pissed you off then, ‘ave I?”
“Whatever gave you that idea?” Iron man asked, over an ominous crackle of electricity.
The crowd screamed again.
“...Easy-” Ozzy began, not quite into the microphone.
The crackling shut off.
“Just kidding, man. You guys kicked -BLEEP-,” Iron Man laughed.
“You son of a bitch,” Matt said, with a sigh of relief.
“So you’re not ‘ere to blow us away? Are you quite sure about that? -Because you owe me one pair of trousers already, you -BLEEEEP-.”
“Yeah, I’m sure- -IF we can come to some arrangement about you taking my name in vain back there...” Iron Man qualified.
“What did you ‘ave in mind?” Ozzy asked, “-because if it’s my soul you’re after, that’s otherwise engaged.”
There was an upsurge of laughter and approving cat-calls from the crowd.
“Well, let’s start with your John Hancock on this,” Iron Man said.
“Ab-so-lutely.” ...A permanent marker squeaked over what sounded like a small plate of Iron Man’s armor. “-You know, you’re not ‘alf bad when you’re not out knocking down buildings...”
“That’d be less of a problem if the bad guys stopped trying to knock me INTO buildings,” Iron Man pointed out, dryly.
“-Then why don’t you leave ‘em alone, you establishment PIG?” Somebody yelled, from the audience.
“You got something to say to me?” Iron Man challenged, “-sound off again punk, loud and proud!”
“You’re a joke, Iron Man! An’ any joker could win a street-fight in a suit of super-powered armor! Who are you to judge? You don’t know what real combat MEANS!”
“Vietnam, right?” Iron Man guessed, calmly.
“Yeah man, I was THERE!” the heckler yelled back, angrily.
“-So was I,” Iron Man cut him off.
There was a beat or two of dead air, with only the soft crackle of microphone static.
“...Is that suit Army?” The heckler asked, mollified but still wary.
“Yeah! Where was my -BLEEP- battle suit?” Someone else in the audience demanded.
“I didn’t get this from Uncle Sam,” Iron Man assured him, “-but about what you said earlier,” he began, raising his voice, “-you asked me ‘why don’t I leave ‘em alone?’”
“-Yeah!”
“I can’t do that because I’m NOT -BLEEP- blind!” Iron Man shouted back.
“Oh, -thanks-...” Matt muttered philosophically.
“-When I see a bunch of super-powered -thugs- tearing a strip offa my city while your ‘establishment’s’ BACK is turned, it just kinda pisses me OFF!” Iron Man snarled, “-you can’t just ignore -BLEEP- like that, that’s how it gets bad! WE can do BETTER than that! We’ve got to!”
This got an answering cheer of approval, though it was by no means universal.
“...An’ besides, the day I need a reason to get inta THIS suit an’ fly, somebody better -BLEEP- bury me, because I will be a -BLEEP- flatliner!” Iron Man declared with what sounded like a grin, and the unibeam on his armor crackled momentarily without firing.
A -much- better cheer greeted that one.
“Now shut up and let this crazy man sing...” Iron Man ordered.
There was a slight squelch of static, and a metallic clink from one of Ozzy’s rings as he took the mic back.
“Thank you, thank you... all right, so I may have gotten a few o’ the details wrong, but don’t fly off and trash the place!- -Now this next one is one yew all may recognize, and if you don’t then -BLEEP- you anyway...”
Matt smirked and left to go on patrol, leaving the radio playing.
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 12:25 PM (next day).
“AH-! Friggin’christ!”
Tony put a hand to the bass-beat of pain in his forehead, and bent down to pick up the Ford wrench he’d just dropped.
At least Peter wouldn’t be coming in today...
Goddamn sun, and dawn’s early light in general.
Okay, so it was actually half past noon, but... at... at what -point- in history had people decided to do business in the daytime? Seriously... It was outmoded. Antediluvian. Should have gone out with corsets and Thomas Edison. Actually, corsets could stay. But daytime operation was ridiculous... Even computers thought better in the cool of night, so why wouldn’t a-
“Anybody home?” A vaguely familiar voice called from the open garage door.
Tony’s head came up, and struck the underside of a classic truck’s hood with completely unnecessary force.
“OW!!!- -god... hangonasecond...” Tony staggered back a step, and held onto the corner of the engine compartment with one white-knuckled hand until he could open his eyes again.
His sunglasses had fallen off, and he was looking straight into the clear blue eyes of Captain America for the second time. And they really -were- blue, like the sky at forty thousand feet, while his...
Tony didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
He swallowed slightly, instead.
“Hi again,” Tony said, and instantly started fishing for his lost sunglasses under the truck’s radiator.
Cap, like Tony, was in civvies today. He wore nondescript blue jeans, brown steel toed boots, a butter yellow button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a blindingly white t-shirt underneath it. Over one arm, he carried a brown leather bomber jacket with an eagle on the back. Cap looked fantastic, but how he’d gotten out the door of the Avengers’ mansion looking like a refugee of the early fifties without Janet Van Dyne waylaying him for his own good, Tony had no idea.
“Are you all right?” Cap asked.
“Yeah, I-” -sunglasses, finally- “-I just hit the um... ...what can I do for you?” Tony asked, slipping his sunglasses back on.
“...I was wondering if you’d take a look at my motorbike,” Cap replied still eyeing him with concern.
Huh, thought Tony, -Captain America- was the one who actually brought his motorbike in.
That figured, in a weird, karmic-debt sort of way...
“Sure thing. What’s wrong with it?” Tony asked, straightening and wiping his hands on the thighs of his green coveralls.
“Well, I just got it, and I’m not sure the adjustment on the clutch is right,” Cap said aloud, but passed Tony a handwritten note with a significant look. ‘Sweep for radio-transmitter’, the note said.
“-I can take care of that. Bring it on inside,” Tony nodded knowingly, stuffing the note in his pocket. Steve did so, and Tony pulled the rolling garage door down.
The bike was beautiful, of course.
An early-model Harley-Davidson Panhead with a gas tank the same shade as the blue on Cap’s shield, and fittings of untouched, glowing chrome.
Tony took out the tools he would have needed for a clutch adjustment to make the performance sound better, and grabbed a pencil from the coffee can by the phone.
‘Blew it with the ‘hi again’. What do I call you out of costume?’ Tony wrote, and handed the paper and pencil over. He crossed the room, took a medium-sized wooden box out of a metal parts cabinet, and unpacked it on the floor beside the Harley, revealing several horrifically complex-looking electronic scanners.
Cap handed him the notepaper and pencil back.
‘I’m Steve Rogers’, the note said.
Tony started to write his own name in return, but the pencil lead broke about halfway up the exposed point, so the lines of ‘Tony Stark’ looked a lot darker and choppier.
Steve underlined ‘Tony’, and gave him an inquiring look.
Tony nodded approvingly, and wrote back, ‘play with my tools while I do this’.
Steve smiled, amused, but nodded shrewdly.
-Of course. The man had been trained in counter-espionage, after all...
Tony began his scans.
Steve put his jacket down, found a clean red rag in a bin by the small pneumatic air compressor, and started wiping down the tools in Tony’s big red roll-around toolbox.
Tony frowned slightly at the LCD screen of the device in his hand. He hadn’t meant those tools. They were already cleaned and oiled anyway...
“It’s good to see you again,” Steve said.
Tony looked up, smiled, and went back to his scan.
“You too, Steve.”
“That wasn’t the sort of party where you stop to chat, but I’d meant to ask you earlier- -what’s that device you have...?” Steve drew a circle in the air in front of his own chest.
“Oh, this-?” Tony glanced down the front of his nominally white A-line, and tapped the scratched black cover that hid his arc reactor from public view. “-It’s a battery for my pacemaker. I took some shrapnel in ‘Nam, and this keeps my heart beating unless I forget to charge it,” he joked.
Steve gave him a doubtful look.
Tony shrugged, and then nodded that yes, he was serious.
He’d also found the first of the bugs on the bike already, snugged up under the frame itself just beneath the Harley’s gas tank. -It had been hard to pin down because it was using the entire frame as a transmitter.
Tony motioned Steve over, and pointed.
Steve felt around carefully under the tank where Tony was pointing, then nodded silently.
Tony pantomimed ripping something out of the bike.
Steve shook his head, and made a ‘sit tight’ downwards motion with one hand.
Tony nodded, and continued his sweep.
Steve stood, and examined some of the eclectic clutter on the garage walls.
He saw assorted hubcaps, hanging coils of thick copper electrical wire, a framed poster of a B-24 bomber in flight, a perfect steel gear the size of a dinner-plate, and several mechanical parts that didn’t seem to go to -anything-. There was a classic hot-rod calendar, heavily annotated in black permanent marker... one scrawl, written sideways on the picture and carefully avoiding the pinup-car itself, looked like some form of complex mathematical notation.
The thing that held Steve’s eye though, was a snapshot of Tony himself, standing with his copilot and a handful of other soldiers by the open door of a green helicopter.
“You were a Captain,” Steve observed, looking back over his shoulder with a wry grin.
“Yeah, I was,” Tony replied, with an ‘eat-shit-and-die’ one.
“-Only made it to PFC, myself,” Steve said, turning back towards the picture.
Tony snapped his fingers.
Steve turned around.
Tony pointed back towards the toolbox, and made a ‘get rolling’ motion with one hand.
“So I guess that means you outrank me,” Steve said with a grin, picking up where he’d left off on his tool-cleaning.
Tony snorted, but smiled, looking back down at his scanner. Something wasn’t adding up. He had isolated the bug on the bike and filtered that frequency out, but the scanner was still picking up a signal from somewhe-
Oh for god’s sake... they DIDN’T...
Tony got up, and paced around the garage floor backwards and forwards for a moment, eyes fixed on the screen of the gray scanner in his outstretched hand, as if he was dancing with it. Forward... back... over... ...-there-.
Tony walked up to Steve, and stopped. He passed the scanner through the air in front of Steve’s body slowly, glaring at the readout in ferocious triumph when the indicator light on the device’s side switched from yellow to red.
Steve blinked, clearly disturbed.
Tony moved Steve’s arms up by his wrists, and scanned him again. He stopped just beneath Steve’s left arm, and pointed.
Steve’s face hardened in a way Tony -never- wanted to see directed at him, and Steve took off both of his civilian shirts. Underneath was a glittering expanse of blue scale-mail, with Cap’s white star displayed proudly in the center. Steve shrugged out of the leather straps of his shield, and set the large disk down against the toolbox beside him.
Tony tightened his scan, and began searching under individual scales one by one, like a small animal searching under the leaves of a plant for insects.
Four scales up from the lower edge of Steve’s armor and along the seam of the blue leather underneath, Tony found his bug. He lifted the scale up and held it there with one forefinger, showing Steve the tiny transmitter hidden in a groove on the underside.
Steve stared at it for a long moment, then nodded. Tony turned back to his scanner, programmed it to filter out the second signal, and gave Steve a thumbs-up.
Aside from what they’d already found, Steve and his motorcycle were clean.
Tony left Steve to finish putting himself back together, and returned to the Harley.
He tapped twice on the clutch with a black-handled screwdriver.
“Yeah, I think that should do it,” he said, “-just go easy until you finish breaking it in.”
“Thank you, Tony,” Steve said, in a tone that was just a shade too sincere for a man simply talking to his mechanic.
Tony began putting his scanning equipment back in its box.
“Do you want a beer?” He asked, without looking up.
“...Yeah, I think I could use one,” Steve admitted, tucking his shirt back into his jeans.
”Me too. They’re in that fridge over by the drill-press,” Tony said, indicating the appropriate direction with a nod.
“What’s the other refrigerator for?” Steve couldn’t help asking.
“It’s a freezer,” Tony replied, without really explaining anything.
Steve took out two beer bottles, and handed Tony one of them. Tony popped the cap off with a practiced twist, drank, and set the bottle down on the concrete floor while he finished putting the rest of his tools away.
-When his headache had begun to fade he wasn’t sure, but it was almost gone now.
“You know, I only know one song on this entire list,” Steve said, from over by the jukebox.
“Sinatra, right?” Tony called over.
“Uh-huh,” Steve replied, still studying the other titles.
“-He’s the kind that lasts,” Tony shrugged, shutting his toolbox.
“Did all these records come with the jukebox when you bought it?” Steve asked.
“No, most of the bands weren’t even around when I got this,” Tony said, patting one of the jukebox’s polished fairings.
“May I?”
“Go ahead.”
“Where do I start?”
“Anywhere you want, but mothers have been chucking out most of these records for decades,” Tony promised.
“I’ll start at the end, then,” Steve decided, and pressed 'G-12-PLAY'.
At first he wasn’t sure the record was being played at all, because it started with a soft, regular mechanical noise, almost like the very faint beat of a helicopter blade. Then a slow ripple of cymbals, and a clear, meditative guitar began. Hide-headed drums, like he’d heard in North Africa while countering one of Rommel’s agents...
‘This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end-‘
It was haunting. Half-foreign music with American-accented words, and suddenly Steve’s mind was churning, throwing him back to the last moment he’d seen Bucky before his grip on the plane slipped, the way rising panic had swamped the courage and irrational trust in the boy’s eyes at the last-
‘Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again’
...Good grief. How had things gotten this bad? How could the chilling, hopeless feeling that had swamped his heart at that fatal moment he’d let go... have become a modern pop song?
‘Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need...of some...stranger's hand
In a...desperate land’
The song played on, but the lyrics became confusing, and Steve couldn’t re-engage with it. When the music trailed off into a montage of crickets, night-birds and distant sirens, Steve looked over at Tony, who was watching his face with concern.
“You done with this one?” Tony asked.
“I- -yes.”
“Good. Try this one,” Tony said, and pressed 'B-3-PLAY'. Quickly.
Elvis’s ‘Rock a Hula Baby’ started.
That got a smile from Steve, as Tony had intended it to. -There were very few people who couldn’t at least laugh at B-3.
Tony listened too, watching Steve’s reaction with satisfaction, and moving slightly with the music.
‘Although I love to kiss my little hula miss
I never get the chance
I wanna hold her tight all through the night
But all she wants to do is dance-’
Okay, -that- part was unfortunate, Tony reflected, though strangely apropos considering...
The song finished. Tony took a pull on his beer.
“I like that one,” Steve decided, smiling a little.
“Me too,” Tony smiled back.
“What was the first one about?” Steve asked.
Tony chewed on his lower lip for a moment, considering.
“War and sex,” he decided.
Steve looked at him thoughtfully.
“You’re not going to lie to me at all, are you?”
“-What?” Tony blinked.
“I’ve been getting the runaround from a lot of people lately,” Steve said, casting a disapproving glance at his bugged motorcycle, “-and you just gave me a straight answer.”
Define straight, Tony thought self-consciously.
“Do you want me to stop?” He asked, aloud.
“No. Tell me about Vietnam. I’ve never really understood that conflict.”
“‘Conflict’, huh?” Tony said, dryly. “-It’s... basically a pissing match with the Red Chinese that got away from us, though you’d never guess that from what the newspapers print. Here, just- -listen.” Tony pressed 'D-1-PLAY'.
‘I got a letter from LBJ
It said this is your lucky day
It’s time to put your khaki trousers on
Though it may seem very queer
We’ve got no job to give you here
So we are sending you to Vietnam...
Lynden Johnson told the nation
Have no fear of escalation
I am trying everyone to please
Though it isn’t really war
We’re sending fifty thousand more
To help save Vietnam from Vietnamese...’
‘Lynden Johnson Told the Nation’ played through, and Steve listened with mounting consternation.
“But- -That doesn’t make any sense-!” he protested, when it was over.
“-Now-,” Tony tilted his beer bottle in the direction of his guest, “-you’re getting it.”
Steve was magnificent, angry.
He got up, and paced a few turns. He killed half his beer in one shot without seeming to notice, and held the neck of the bottle between his first and second fingers, forgotten.
Tony finished his beer, and pressed 'F-2-PLAY'.
Zeppelin’s ‘The Battle of Evermore’ began.
The melody was strange, almost like folk music, and it seemed more of a framework to hang the lyrics -on- than an accompaniment... But the words began to tell a story of heroes, and after the first few lines, Steve was listening.
It was strange. Both songs had been about war, yet he was hopeful this one would end differently. Less fashionably, by having the good guys win.
A hero, who walked in shadow. A great war, and troops called up. The angels of Avalon- -why did that make him think of Spitfire? A tyrant, whose face was red. -Boy, did that strike home...
And it seemed to be- -was- -about heroes, some of whom could fly.
“That was recent, wasn’t it?” Steve guessed when the song finished.
“Yes, it was,” Tony replied, pleased at the deduction.
“By ring-wraiths, were they talking about the Mandarin’s henchmen?” Steve asked.
“W- not that I know of. Most of the imagery is from a fantasy novel. ...I just wanted to play you something where the good guys didn’t get screwed,” Tony grinned.
“A fantasy novel?” Steve asked, interested.
“‘The Lord of the Rings’. -It’s a trilogy, actually. I’ve got the first two books around here somewhere...” Tony began.
---
-tbc-