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cap_ironman2009-12-28 12:28 am
otherhazards.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2009-12-28 12:28 am
Entry tags:
Fic: Juke Box Hero (Chapter 2)
Title: Juke Box Hero (Chapter 2)
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: R
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, Tony/Madam Masque. (Co-starring Peter Parker, Sue Richards, Ben Grimm, and Sharon Carter.)
Summary: Two very different veterans return home to Greenwich Village.
=================================================
Tony’s apartment above the Iron Horse Garage, 6:46 AM.
“Tony, are you up?” Peter called up the stairs.
“...Who’s that?” Whitney asked, sleepily.
Tony pressed a hand to his face, and grinned ruefully behind it.
“That’s Peter, he works for me.”
“Well get rid of him...” Whitney said, pointedly.
“Nope,” Tony swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and ran a hand through his hair.
“You said you’d make me breakfast,” Whitney reminded him sulkily, “-not start work at seven in the morning...”
“And so I will,” Tony promised, “-but I can’t have a gorgeous lady in a golden mask wandering out in her birthday suit, or Peter’ll want one too.”
He kissed the back of her hand.
“You’re an ass,” Whitney smirked, or at least Tony thought it sounded that way.
“Maybe, but you just got upgraded to breakfast in bed,” Tony pointed out, picking up his red bathrobe.
Whitney draped herself artfully onto Tony’s half of the bed in a way that arguably counted as payback, and waggled her fingers at him.
“Whoa!”
Tony nearly collided with Peter just outside the bedroom door. He pulled the door mostly shut with a quick jerk, grabbed Peter by the shoulder, and marched him backwards into the kitchen.
“Peter my boy, if you keep walking in on me up here, you are gonna get a nasty surprise one of these days...” he said, tersely.
Peter’s eyes widened and he looked from Tony to the door.
“Holy cats-!” He gulped, “-Sorry, boss.”
Tony lowered his voice to a murmur, and added,
“I have a guest, you -will- be polite to her, and you don’t know -shit- about the hero game.”
“Gotcha,” Peter nodded.
“Siddown,” Tony let go of him, and got a skillet out of the dish-drainer.
Peter sat.
“-So I was thinking of doing my history paper on the biker gangs of the fifties- you know, because we’ve got some customers who were around for that, and we could ask to them-” Peter began, without preamble.
“What’s this ‘we’ Kemosabe?” Tony interrupted, cracking some eggs into a bowl.
“Okay, -I- could ask them what it was really like back then, and maybe get some pictures of their patches.”
“Ton-y? What are you making me-?” Whitney called playfully from the bed.
“Scrambled eggs Casablanca,” Tony called back over his shoulder enigmatically.
“What’s that?” Peter asked.
“You’ll see,” Tony promised.
“Hi, Peter-!” Whitney called, incorrigible.
Peter flushed.
“Hello, ahh... ma’am?”
“-I’m Whitney. Nice to meet you.”
“Um. Heh. Likewise... I think...” Peter replied, sheepishly. “...Oh god. She’s naked. She is, isn’t she?” Peter said to himself, under his breath.
“Pretty much,” Tony smirked, without turning around.
“...I said that out loud?” Peter squeaked.
“Tony said you worked for him, Peter-” Whitney unwittingly interrupted them, “-what is it that you do?”
“He’s my assistant,” Tony called back.
“I’m his accountant,” Peter replied, at exactly the same time.
Whitney laughed, and it made both of the guys smile. Women were like that, sometimes. Just... great ambiance.
A different and spicier kind of ambiance began to fill the air as Tony added his egg-turmeric mixture to what was already frying.
The experiment was a success however, and the three of them ate it in two separate rooms, talking loudly back and forth through the slightly-cracked door.
Peter took the fact that Tony had chosen to eat in the bedroom with Whitney as a hint, and left as soon as he was finished.
“Sweet kid,” Whitney observed when they heard the door shut after him, and feet descending the stairs.
“He has his moments,” Tony shrugged.
“Is he yours?” Whitney asked, fork poised.
“HEY! Do I look old enough to have a son in high school?” Tony demanded, trying to sound hurt.
“You are the strangest man I have ever known,” Whitney smiled.
“...That’s a selling point, isn’t it?” Tony guessed.
“-Except for the part where you won’t make me my armor,” Whitney agreed, dryly.
“War Machine is out of your league, Whit. Stop asking me that,” Tony said, annoyed.
“I can pay you, you know.”
...Yeah, if you go back to being the head of the Maggia, Tony thought angrily.
God, when had things gotten so complicated...?
“Payment has nothing to do with it,” he said aloud, “-the armor is mine, period. The only reason War Machine exists at all is because Morgan didn’t respect that.”
“Tony-”
“-And if War Machine never existed, you’d still have a face,” Tony cut her off.
“Tony... that wasn’t your fault,” Whitney told him, looking away and moving the breakfast dishes onto the nightstand.
“Yes it was,” Tony sighed.
“...You made it up to me,” she whispered, touching a control stud on her mask just beneath the shadow of her smooth, black hair.
The mask flickered, and vanished beneath the illusion of another beautiful woman’s face.
“Dammit, the hologram’s still pixelating along your hairline...” Tony frowned, reaching out for it.
“You can fix it later,” Whitney promised, and pushed him back down onto the bed.
“I can fix it later,” Tony agreed.
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 8:49 PM.
‘Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Lookin' for adventure
And whatever comes our way-’
Tony sprayed down a rag with cleaning solution from an unmarked plastic bottle, and reached back into his gold-painted leg armor. ...This cleaning had needed doing all week.
On the table beside him his helmet radio was obligingly tapping into a so-called secure SHIELD frequency, though on the whole, Tony preferred the jukebox’s ‘Born to be Wild’.
‘Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace-’
[...Baker twenty two to Candy Store, all quiet.]
[Candy Store copies-kshh...]
‘Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space-’
[...Kssssh...]
[..Sshhhh... ..crackle... ...kshh...]
‘I like smoke and lightning
Heavy metal thunder-’
[...Kshh... ...report-only APB, code True Blue, contact lost Newark, New Jersey.]
[...Candy Store copies, will relay... ...kshhcrkl...]
‘Racin' with the wind-’
...WHAT?
Tony paused, spray bottle in hand, staring at his helmet. It had gone back to playing static again, but- -True Blue?
‘True Blue’ was Steve. ...Steve had gone AWOL?
‘-And the feelin' that I'm under
Yeah Darlin' go make it happen-’
Tony grinned. He jumped up, snatched his helmet off the tabletop, did a few dramatic dance moves with it, and kissed it firmly on the faceplate.
[...kkshh.... ...Baker twenty two to Candy Store... contact subject ‘Blackjack’, thirty-fourth and Wilson...]
[...kK!... ...Copy your contact Baker twenty two, ‘Blackjack’ thirty-fourth and Wilson...]
“I -knew- you could figure it out,” Tony told his helmet happily, “-I just knew it!”
‘-Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space
Like a true nature's child
We were born, born to be wild-!’
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 4:02 AM (next day).
The phone rang.
Tony let it go for three rings, then put down his soldering iron and picked up on the fourth ring.
“Custer, this had better not be you,” he warned.
“Tony?” A familiar voice said.
“...Steve?” Tony blinked.
“Good, I was hoping to catch you before you went to bed, or- -I didn’t just wake you up, did I?” Steve asked, as if the possibility had just occurred to him.
“No, no, uh... what’s up?”
“Nothing that can’t wait. Can I come over?”
“Wait- you’re still in New York City?” Tony asked, quickly.
“Yes, why wouldn’t I be?” Steve asked, perplexed.
“Never mind. I’ll be down in the garage. Just knock.”
About two minutes later, the deep purr of Steve’s motorcycle pulled up to the garage, and stopped. Tony raised the garage door by hand, and a little light spilled out. Steve was in civvies again, but not by much. He’d pushed the cowl of his costume down, and buttoned on a long tan trench coat over everything else so that only the red boots showed. Tony thought the look screamed ‘secret agent’, but didn’t comment.
“Hi Steve,” he smiled, instead.
“Tony, how are you?”
“Good. Great. I was just finishing something up-” he waved vaguely in the direction of the soldering iron on his desk.
“You mind if I-” Steve began, indicating his bike.
“Yeah, yeah, c’mon in, the light’s attracting moths,” Tony said, motioning him forwards impatiently.
Steve rolled his motorcycle into the garage, and Tony pulled the door down after him. Tony glanced up at a small gray box he’d recently mounted on the garage wall, but the indicator light was still green.
“So,” he said, “I heard you got rid of the bugs.”
“...How...?” Steve stared, hands pausing on the buttons of his trench coat.
“I have my ways,” Tony shrugged.
“Look me in the eyes,” Steve ordered, suddenly standing -very- tall in front of him.
“Okay...” Tony did it.
“Tell me you had nothing to do with those bugs, or what happened on 108th street,” Steve instructed.
“No, Steve. I had nothing to do with those, I swear,” Tony promised.
‘...108th street?’ Tony wondered.
“Okay,” Steve nodded. He took a step back, and sighed. “-Sorry about that, but I’m not sure who to trust right now.”
“Cross SHIELD, the Army, and Stark Industries off your list, and go from there,” Tony suggested, dryly.
Steve finished unbuttoning his coat, and managed to look both like a wet dream, and completely miserable.
“Do you want a drink?” Tony asked.
“I’ll take a Coke, if you have one,” Steve replied, with a slight smile.
“Second shelf down, right beside the opened bottle of Jack,” Tony told him, helpfully.
Steve got out two Cokes, and gave Tony one.
“-Thanks,” Tony motioned him to the cracked green leather couch to one side of the jukebox.
Steve took off his coat and shield, and sat.
“...You do have a refrigerator with food in it somewhere, right?” Steve asked.
“Yes, it’s upstairs,” Tony laughed, opening his soda.
Steve opened his too, and they drank.
“How did you find me here the first time?” Tony asked, suddenly.
“Hm-? Well, Power Man mentioned you ran a bike shop here in the village, or I doubt I would have,” Steve replied, guilelessly.
“I’ll kill him,” Tony said, to himself.
“What?” Asked Steve, frowning.
“-Nothing. -Inside joke,” Tony amended, hastily.
Steve looked a little wistful, but didn’t ask.
Tony drank his Coke in the deepening silence, and started wondering if he should put a song on.
“I’ve decided to take a road trip,” Steve said, instead.
“Where?” Tony asked.
“...I don’t know yet,” Steve admitted, and some of the tension seemed to lift from around his eyes.
“That’s a terrific way to start,” Tony smiled, and held out his Coke. Steve tapped his Coke against Tony’s, and they both drank.
“I feel like I’m running away from home,” Steve added- -and then paused, as if surprised at himself.
“Have you ever read anything by Kerouac?” Tony asked.
“No...”
“Maybe when this is all over, you should.”
“I’ve barely started ‘The Two Towers’, I’m afraid,” Steve smiled. “-Do you give all your friends books to read like this?”
“No,” Tony realized aloud, “-I don’t.”
“Well, thanks for helping me catch up then,” Steve told him, smiling warmly.
‘Oh my god I’m falling for him...’ Thought Tony.
“Listen, this road trip... you wouldn’t be planning to start it tomorrow morning, would you?” Tony asked.
“Yes, in just a few hours,” Steve replied, like a man who had just woken up from a dream.
“Why don’t you catch a couple hours’ sleep down here, and I’ll wake you up in time for breakfast?” Tony offered.
“But-” ‘-I just got here,’ Steve thought. Aloud he said, “-weren’t you in the middle of something?”
“I just finished,” Tony lied automatically, then corrected, “-with... what I’m doing on it tonight, I mean.”
“I wasn’t making fun of you, you know,” Steve said.
“What?” Tony blinked.
“For being well-read. It’s kind of nice to talk to somebody who is, on something besides science.”
“Oh,” Tony swallowed, “-okay.”
“-I went to art school for a while,” Steve added as a peace offering, “-I dropped out to join the US Army in forty-one.”
“...I was at MIT,” Tony replied carefully, “-I dropped out to manage S-the family business.”
“You father was a mechanic?” Steve asked, looking around the garage with interest.
“No, he was an electrical engineer,” Tony said, relaxing a little, “-I started this place on my own dime.”
Steve didn’t ask what had happened to ‘the family business’, and Tony didn’t offer to tell him.
“...Art school? Seriously?” Tony asked, after a moment’s reflection.
“Yes,” Steve smiled, as if pleased to have surprised him.
“Were you any good?” Tony asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. Good enough when I was in practice and it made me happy,” Steve shrugged.
“Show me,” Tony decided, on impulse.
“You want me to draw something for you?”
“Yes.”
Tony got up, fished his drafting notebook and some pencils out of the top drawer of a tan metal filing cabinet, and handed them over.
“What do you want me to draw?” Steve asked, still amused.
“Surprise me.”
Steve turned the notebook so Tony couldn’t see it, and began sketching. From time to time he glanced up mischievously, and Tony began to worry that Steve had decided to draw him.
When he got his notebook back though, Tony saw a pretty little dark-haired hula girl with a few backup-dancing palm trees sketched into the background behind her.
“Sign it,” Tony laughed, tapping a finger in the lower right-hand corner.
“All right,” Steve said, and signed it ‘S. Rogers’.
-
Tony’s kitchen, 06:40 AM (same day).
“-Oh, I know where that is. L’Institute Polytechnique is there now. You can get the best Belgian coffee, right over the border,” Tony was saying.
“No kidding? Last time I saw it, it was-” another man began.
Peter opened the door, and stopped short.
“Oh-! -Hello...” Peter said, awkwardly.
“Good morning,” said Captain America, brightly.
He and Tony were relaxing at the kitchen table drinking coffee, and from the look of the dishes in front of them and the delicious smells that lingered in the room, they’d already had breakfast.
Peter felt obscurely hurt.
“Cap, this is Peter Parker,” Tony introduced, “Pete, this is-”
“I know who that is,” Peter swallowed.
“Well, since you’ve already seen my face without the cowl you may as well call me Steve,” Steve offered, extending his hand.
His cowl was pushed down, though he was in full costume otherwise.
“Spider Man,” Peter blurted out, taking Steve’s hand and shaking it happily.
Tony choked slightly on his coffee.
“-Pleased to meet you, sir,” Peter added.
“You too,” Steve smiled, “-and I have a feeling we’ll meet again, but right now I should really be getting on the road.”
“You should have been there an hour ago,” Tony agreed, “-enjoy midtown.”
Steve shot Tony a sidelong look, and both men stood.
“Thank you, Tony. For everything,” Steve said, looking him in the eyes.
“Any time,” Tony replied, with a slight smile.
“I’ll return your book when I get back into town,” Steve promised, setting his dishes in the sink.
“It’s a dangerous business, going out your door...” Tony quoted, coffee mug in hand.
“-Don’t I know it,” Steve grinned, pulling on his trench coat.
“C’mon downstairs,” Tony said, “-I’ll let you out.”
“It was nice meeting you, Peter,” Steve said, turning.
“Bye Cap- -er- -Steve,” amended Peter.
Steve pulled his cowl up, and followed Tony downstairs into the garage.
“Hm,” Peter drummed his fingers quickly against the countertop, then stopped. He looked at the dishes in the sink. He peered curiously into the skillet on the stove, where there was still a hash brown and two fried eggs.
Peter had never known Tony to make hash browns...
A motorcycle roared to life outside, and faded away into the flow of early morning traffic. The garage door rattled down, and Tony came back upstairs. He dropped into his chair at the kitchen table, finished the dregs of his coffee, and sighed distractedly.
“That... did just happen, didn’t it?” Said Peter, carefully.
“Gee whiz, Spider Man, what do YOU think?” Tony asked, sarcastically innocent.
“No, seriously,” Peter insisted, “-Captain America just made you breakfast?”
“Yes Peter, he did,” Tony smiled.
“...Why?” Peter asked.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Tony said wryly, “-but if you’re hungry, the leftovers are in the skillet...”
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 2:40 PM.
“Captain Stark?”
The corners of Tony’s eyes tightened slightly in annoyance, but he looked up over the seat of the Softtail he was working on.
“Not anymore. You are...?” He prompted, instantly making his visitor feel both rude and unwelcome.
“Agent Sharon Carter, sir. I’m with SHIELD.”
“Uh-huh,” Tony agreed pleasantly, eyes flicking to the clear plastic ID holder clipped to the pocket of her sharp blue blazer.
He fished a red, greasy rag from the pocket of his coveralls, and began wiping his hands on it. They weren’t getting perceptibly cleaner.
Sharon’s lovely lips thinned a little.
“I can see you’re a busy man, so I’ll come straight to the point. Have you worked on anything for Captain America recently?"
Tony actually laughed. He looked around the empty garage as if Sharon had asked him to produce Cap out of thin air.
“Honey, if I had, how would I know? The man has a secret identity, same as most of the capes in this city...”
“Cap’s not just another cape. He’s one of ours, and-“
“Sure about that, are ya?” Tony smirked, eyebrows slightly raised.
Sharon stopped talking, took out a business card, and handed it to him with forced politeness.
“If you or any of your known vigilante associates should happen to see him, please see that he gets this.”
“I’ll get right on that,” Tony agreed, taking the card.
-
Tony’s kitchen, 1:04 AM.
Tony touched a pencil eraser to his lips, and frowned at the precise lines and notation he’d just added in his drafting notebook.
One of his fingers traced the cutouts in the steel frame of his actual arc reactor without looking down at it. It was still bright, even now...
Steve’s incredibly risky jump-start of the arc back at the train yard had produced an arc reaction of unprecedented power and longevity, but the device itself was slightly asymmetrical, which meant that the reaction still wouldn’t truly be a self-sustaining one.
Correcting that asymmetry would mean either re-manufacturing the plasma ionization ring, or creating another one from scratch. Simple enough. The real problem lay in switching out the old ring for the new, because he couldn’t disconnect the arc from his chest while it was still in operation without being reduced to a pile of carbon cinders by the resulting electrical discharge.
On the other hand he couldn’t simply let the arc run down until it was safe to disconnect, because the transistorized magnets that kept his heart from failing would run out of power at least forty thousand volts before that happened.
...This was, and always HAD been, the problem with his specialized transistors.
While they were very good at multiplying the potential of whatever device he combined them with, the raw voltage they required to make that trick work was well into the pentouple digits.
Since the arc reactor normally operated around one point five Gigajoules anyway, that wasn’t a pressing issue... but it did mean that nothing he possessed short of the arc itself could power his armor, even if by some miracle the magnets sustaining his heart could be hooked up to a suitably powerful outside source- -through all that goddamned gel that now covered the carefully sealed connectors- -without electrocuting him outright.
As things stood...
Well, there was no reason the arc reactor would fail within his lifetime, provided he kept the voltage fluctuations down by occasionally connecting it back to an ordinary AC power source, and didn’t draw off enough power at once to drop the reaction within the arc casing below 10,000 volts...
-
New York International airspace, 2,200 feet above sea level. 3:08 PM.
The saucer-like craft dodged frantically to avoid Iron Man’s repulsor blasts, and clawed for the upper atmosphere as fast as it’s quantum-engines would go. Tony was falling behind and he knew it, but there was always a chance that whoever was piloting that thing would make a mistake... he switched to onboard oxygen, and climbed higher.
Higher until the metal of the armor actually began to feel cold wherever it made contact with his bare skin, higher until the scattered thunderheads were left far behind, and the sky became the inside of a deep cobalt-blue bowl.
Higher until he had to yawn to pop his ears for the third time, and the flying saucer was barely a silver speck in his field of vision. He was losing speed fast now, until finally...
There.
Tony floated like a dandelion seed on the last layer of the Earth’s atmosphere that was thick enough for his bootjets to compress for upward flight.
He felt weightless. Dizzy. Drunk. Invincible. ...A little tingly.
Tony exhaled within the fragile shell of his helmet, and the cold Plexiglas covering his eye-slits fogged momentarily. ...it was so still up here. Pristine. Some people went their whole lives without seeing this...
Tony blinked, and jerked awake a hundred feet lower than he’d been a moment ago, adrenaline flooding his system. He opened the valve on his oxygen system a little wider, and took deep breaths.
There was a tiny electric-pink flash in the upper atmosphere, and Tony’s radar beeped negatively to let him know that it had lost the flying saucer entirely.
...Had that thing just jumped to light speed somehow? Tony wondered, his eyes widening a little. Or- -had he just witnessed the opening of a wormhole? Why a light flash in -that- spectral range, instead of the ripple of a space/time distortion effect?
Tony almost wished he could call the hostile alien craft back and ask.
Instead he turned in midair, leaning sideways casually until the cushion of compressed air slipped out from beneath his boots and he began to fell Earthwards, accelerating horribly fast. He began to feel lightheaded again, and shut off the flow of extra oxygen to the tube in his helmet. Tony broke mach two as he dived, arms stiff and streamlined at his sides. He watched New York resolve itself out into rivers and land, neighborhoods, individual blocks like tiny squares on a circuit board...
When he could pick out Greenwich Village visually, Tony cut back upwards in a huge loop, gravity-braking hard enough to bring tiny black dots swimming into his peripheral vision from the G-forces.
Mach two... one... and then sound came back in a howling rush.
Tony completed the loop at barely three hundred miles per hour, and did a barrel-roll over the Village just because he could.
He touched down with a crunch of tarred gravel on the roof of a defunct local nightclub, and walked out to the edge of the roof to people-watch for a while. Some long-haired kids with an acoustic guitar spotted him from the square below, pointed, and waved.
Tony waved back, but he stayed where he was.
-
The Baxter Building, 5:25 AM.
The far door opened, and Tony looked up sharply. Sue Richards padded across the room, and offered him a white coffee cup with a circled blue number four on the side. Tony took it and held it in both hands, but didn’t drink.
“-Thanks,” he said, staring dully down at the rising wisps of steam.
He was still in full armor except for the red and gold helmet sitting on the chair beside him, and his shoulders were slumped in a way Sue had never seen before.
“He hasn’t-” Tony began, looking up at her again.
“No, but Reed said that all traces of the Venom creature are out of Peter’s system now,” Sue assured him, creating an invisible forcefield-couch across from Tony’s chair and sitting down. “-You did the right thing by bringing him here, Tony.”
“I should have hauled him in days ago,” Tony sighed, running a hand back through his helmet-mussed hair.
“Maybe,” Sue agreed, honestly.
Tony remembered he was holding a cup of coffee, and drank.
-
The Baxter Building 8:28 AM (same day).
Peter woke up in a hospital room he’d never seen before. He wasn’t wearing his mask, and there was a huge bald guy made of orange stone sitting in the too-small chair beside his bed reading a newspaper. Peter suppressed the urge to jump at least twenty feet in any given direction and stick to a wall. Ben Grimm’s eyes swiveled downwards, and met his. Peter blinked.
“Hey... welcome back, kid...” Ben said kindly, closing his newspaper.
“Did I kill somebody?” Peter swallowed.
“Not so far as I heard,” Ben replied, frowning a little, “How d’ya feel?”
“...Okay. A little thirsty and weird. ...How did I get here?” Peter asked, sitting up on his elbows.
Ben gave Peter a look that Peter didn’t understand at once.
“Ol’ Shellhead brought’cha in. He’s waitin’ outside, actually,” Ben said, jerking a thumb towards the room’s only door.
“Why outside?” Peter asked.
“Ahh, that’s between him an’ Reed. Ya wanna see ‘im?”
Peter nodded.
Ben put his head out the door.
“Hey Tony! Yer kid’s awake!”
“He’s my student, not my kid,” Tony corrected with annoyance, squeezing past Ben into the room with an unscrupulous use of transistor-powered strength that left a long red scratch in the paint on the door.
“YOU,” Tony pointed at Peter as he strode up to the bed.
“Me?” Peter prompted.
“What day is it?” Tony demanded.
“Friday?” Peter guessed.
“WRONG. It is Saturday, and I have been chasing your tar-baby ass all over this city since midnight on Thursday.”
“...Thank you? Peter said, after a pause.
“You’re welcome, Spider. Now put your clothes back on,” Tony smiled.
“Venom’s gone, right? It feels like he’s gone...” Peter began.
“Yeah, Reed fixed that sucker but good,” Ben nodded, “-we got ‘im in a jar in the back if ya wanna see...”
“I... Venom was my costume, wasn’t he?” Peter guessed, uncomfortably.
“’Fraid so, kid. You ain’t much skinnier’n butane-breath though, an’ that gown ain’t your color. Hangonnasecond...” Ben began rummaging in a cabinet on the wall, pulling out sweatpants and other workout gear in various sizes.
Peter took a breath, and shut his eyes.
He tried not to remember the oily, pervasive touch of the symbiote’s skin meshing with his, and failed. ...He shuddered involuntarily.
A heavy metal gauntlet settled quietly on Peter’s left shoulder, and stayed there.
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 10:20 AM.
A sheet of heavy, translucent plastic was stretched across the jagged hole in the middle of the roll-down garage door. From inside, Steve heard the hard-edged whine of a circular saw slicing through sheet-metal.
He shut his Harley off, and walked up to the damaged door. The circular saw inside fell silent.
“Hi! Can I come in?” Steve called, around the edge of the plastic.
“Steve! Yeah, just step through,” Tony called back, setting down his saw.
The galvanized steel around the edges of the hole had actually been melted, Steve noticed as he lifted the plastic aside.
Inside, the garage floor was covered with bright metal shavings, and a series of what looked like replacement slats for the damaged garage door lay half-finished on a folding table to Steve’s right. Tony tugged off his gloves, and pushed his safety goggles up.
Steve looked from Tony to the hole melted in the door, and back again.
“I had a slight billing dispute with one of my customers,” Tony grinned. “-How was your ride?”
Steve paused, not sure how to put his thoughts into words.
He’d broken up what he’d been told was a riot at a small college campus, and learned that two of the Red Skull’s henchmen had been behind the whole thing.
He’d slept in the grass, woken up with the dawn, and watched a butterfly dry its wings.
He’d found Peggy Carter again, her mind broken by the last day he’d seen her during the war.
He’d learned that her sister Sharon, the lovely agent thirteen, had joined SHIELD for the express purpose of... well... stalking him, and that Nick Fury had figured it out months ago and decided to let her.
“Enlightening,” Steve replied, unzipping his bomber jacket and folding it over one arm. “-But it’s good to be back.”
“You look thirsty,” Tony observed.
“...You just want me to get you a beer, don’t you,” Steve realized, amused.
“Would you mind?” Tony grinned, hopefully.
Steve smiled and shook his head, but he got two beers out of the refrigerator and handed one over. Tony was dusted head-to-boots in fine metal shavings, and the damp fabric of his once-white A-line clung to his chest and the covered arc reactor in ways that were very difficult not to draw.
Steve opened his beer and drank, shutting his eyes.
Tony watched Steve’s lips close around the mouth of the brown glass bottle, and swallowed.
“So... what are you going to do now?” Tony asked, somewhat at random.
“I think...” Steve said slowly, lowering the bottle and studying a reflection in the glass, “...I’m going to concentrate on being an Avenger for a while. That way I can do some good as Captain America with a bunch of folks that...” Steve paused.
“...That you can trust?” Tony supplied.
“-Yeah,” Steve admitted, “The Avengers do assist SHIELD sometimes, but I get the feeling that Fury’s been trying to put things past me that he wouldn’t have tried on Ms. Van Dyne and the others, and I don’t like it.”
“Welcome to the future, Steve,” Tony said, wryly.
“Oh, I don’t know... nineteen seventy one’s not so bad,” Steve began, carefully.
“No?” Tony’s eyebrows lifted.
“No. It’s different, I‘ll grant you, and I never expected to be on a superhero team funded by a- -a fashion designer...”
‘Woman’, Tony’s amused mind translated, easily.
“-But if heroes today can represent all the things Hitler hated most, I think I can live with it.” Steve asserted.
“You mean like Power Man?” Tony asked.
“I mean Power Man, Misty Knight, Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch... you...” Steve listed.
Tony froze.
“...And me,” Steve finished, a little consciously.
“-You’re not Jewish, are you,” Tony stated, with a lopsided smirk.
“No.”
“Neither am I.”
“...Do you want to dance?” Steve asked.
“Yes,” Tony said without hesitation, “-C-12.”
---
-end-
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: R
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, Tony/Madam Masque. (Co-starring Peter Parker, Sue Richards, Ben Grimm, and Sharon Carter.)
Summary: Two very different veterans return home to Greenwich Village.
=================================================
Tony’s apartment above the Iron Horse Garage, 6:46 AM.
“Tony, are you up?” Peter called up the stairs.
“...Who’s that?” Whitney asked, sleepily.
Tony pressed a hand to his face, and grinned ruefully behind it.
“That’s Peter, he works for me.”
“Well get rid of him...” Whitney said, pointedly.
“Nope,” Tony swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and ran a hand through his hair.
“You said you’d make me breakfast,” Whitney reminded him sulkily, “-not start work at seven in the morning...”
“And so I will,” Tony promised, “-but I can’t have a gorgeous lady in a golden mask wandering out in her birthday suit, or Peter’ll want one too.”
He kissed the back of her hand.
“You’re an ass,” Whitney smirked, or at least Tony thought it sounded that way.
“Maybe, but you just got upgraded to breakfast in bed,” Tony pointed out, picking up his red bathrobe.
Whitney draped herself artfully onto Tony’s half of the bed in a way that arguably counted as payback, and waggled her fingers at him.
“Whoa!”
Tony nearly collided with Peter just outside the bedroom door. He pulled the door mostly shut with a quick jerk, grabbed Peter by the shoulder, and marched him backwards into the kitchen.
“Peter my boy, if you keep walking in on me up here, you are gonna get a nasty surprise one of these days...” he said, tersely.
Peter’s eyes widened and he looked from Tony to the door.
“Holy cats-!” He gulped, “-Sorry, boss.”
Tony lowered his voice to a murmur, and added,
“I have a guest, you -will- be polite to her, and you don’t know -shit- about the hero game.”
“Gotcha,” Peter nodded.
“Siddown,” Tony let go of him, and got a skillet out of the dish-drainer.
Peter sat.
“-So I was thinking of doing my history paper on the biker gangs of the fifties- you know, because we’ve got some customers who were around for that, and we could ask to them-” Peter began, without preamble.
“What’s this ‘we’ Kemosabe?” Tony interrupted, cracking some eggs into a bowl.
“Okay, -I- could ask them what it was really like back then, and maybe get some pictures of their patches.”
“Ton-y? What are you making me-?” Whitney called playfully from the bed.
“Scrambled eggs Casablanca,” Tony called back over his shoulder enigmatically.
“What’s that?” Peter asked.
“You’ll see,” Tony promised.
“Hi, Peter-!” Whitney called, incorrigible.
Peter flushed.
“Hello, ahh... ma’am?”
“-I’m Whitney. Nice to meet you.”
“Um. Heh. Likewise... I think...” Peter replied, sheepishly. “...Oh god. She’s naked. She is, isn’t she?” Peter said to himself, under his breath.
“Pretty much,” Tony smirked, without turning around.
“...I said that out loud?” Peter squeaked.
“Tony said you worked for him, Peter-” Whitney unwittingly interrupted them, “-what is it that you do?”
“He’s my assistant,” Tony called back.
“I’m his accountant,” Peter replied, at exactly the same time.
Whitney laughed, and it made both of the guys smile. Women were like that, sometimes. Just... great ambiance.
A different and spicier kind of ambiance began to fill the air as Tony added his egg-turmeric mixture to what was already frying.
The experiment was a success however, and the three of them ate it in two separate rooms, talking loudly back and forth through the slightly-cracked door.
Peter took the fact that Tony had chosen to eat in the bedroom with Whitney as a hint, and left as soon as he was finished.
“Sweet kid,” Whitney observed when they heard the door shut after him, and feet descending the stairs.
“He has his moments,” Tony shrugged.
“Is he yours?” Whitney asked, fork poised.
“HEY! Do I look old enough to have a son in high school?” Tony demanded, trying to sound hurt.
“You are the strangest man I have ever known,” Whitney smiled.
“...That’s a selling point, isn’t it?” Tony guessed.
“-Except for the part where you won’t make me my armor,” Whitney agreed, dryly.
“War Machine is out of your league, Whit. Stop asking me that,” Tony said, annoyed.
“I can pay you, you know.”
...Yeah, if you go back to being the head of the Maggia, Tony thought angrily.
God, when had things gotten so complicated...?
“Payment has nothing to do with it,” he said aloud, “-the armor is mine, period. The only reason War Machine exists at all is because Morgan didn’t respect that.”
“Tony-”
“-And if War Machine never existed, you’d still have a face,” Tony cut her off.
“Tony... that wasn’t your fault,” Whitney told him, looking away and moving the breakfast dishes onto the nightstand.
“Yes it was,” Tony sighed.
“...You made it up to me,” she whispered, touching a control stud on her mask just beneath the shadow of her smooth, black hair.
The mask flickered, and vanished beneath the illusion of another beautiful woman’s face.
“Dammit, the hologram’s still pixelating along your hairline...” Tony frowned, reaching out for it.
“You can fix it later,” Whitney promised, and pushed him back down onto the bed.
“I can fix it later,” Tony agreed.
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 8:49 PM.
‘Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Lookin' for adventure
And whatever comes our way-’
Tony sprayed down a rag with cleaning solution from an unmarked plastic bottle, and reached back into his gold-painted leg armor. ...This cleaning had needed doing all week.
On the table beside him his helmet radio was obligingly tapping into a so-called secure SHIELD frequency, though on the whole, Tony preferred the jukebox’s ‘Born to be Wild’.
‘Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace-’
[...Baker twenty two to Candy Store, all quiet.]
[Candy Store copies-kshh...]
‘Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space-’
[...Kssssh...]
[..Sshhhh... ..crackle... ...kshh...]
‘I like smoke and lightning
Heavy metal thunder-’
[...Kshh... ...report-only APB, code True Blue, contact lost Newark, New Jersey.]
[...Candy Store copies, will relay... ...kshhcrkl...]
‘Racin' with the wind-’
...WHAT?
Tony paused, spray bottle in hand, staring at his helmet. It had gone back to playing static again, but- -True Blue?
‘True Blue’ was Steve. ...Steve had gone AWOL?
‘-And the feelin' that I'm under
Yeah Darlin' go make it happen-’
Tony grinned. He jumped up, snatched his helmet off the tabletop, did a few dramatic dance moves with it, and kissed it firmly on the faceplate.
[...kkshh.... ...Baker twenty two to Candy Store... contact subject ‘Blackjack’, thirty-fourth and Wilson...]
[...kK!... ...Copy your contact Baker twenty two, ‘Blackjack’ thirty-fourth and Wilson...]
“I -knew- you could figure it out,” Tony told his helmet happily, “-I just knew it!”
‘-Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space
Like a true nature's child
We were born, born to be wild-!’
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 4:02 AM (next day).
The phone rang.
Tony let it go for three rings, then put down his soldering iron and picked up on the fourth ring.
“Custer, this had better not be you,” he warned.
“Tony?” A familiar voice said.
“...Steve?” Tony blinked.
“Good, I was hoping to catch you before you went to bed, or- -I didn’t just wake you up, did I?” Steve asked, as if the possibility had just occurred to him.
“No, no, uh... what’s up?”
“Nothing that can’t wait. Can I come over?”
“Wait- you’re still in New York City?” Tony asked, quickly.
“Yes, why wouldn’t I be?” Steve asked, perplexed.
“Never mind. I’ll be down in the garage. Just knock.”
About two minutes later, the deep purr of Steve’s motorcycle pulled up to the garage, and stopped. Tony raised the garage door by hand, and a little light spilled out. Steve was in civvies again, but not by much. He’d pushed the cowl of his costume down, and buttoned on a long tan trench coat over everything else so that only the red boots showed. Tony thought the look screamed ‘secret agent’, but didn’t comment.
“Hi Steve,” he smiled, instead.
“Tony, how are you?”
“Good. Great. I was just finishing something up-” he waved vaguely in the direction of the soldering iron on his desk.
“You mind if I-” Steve began, indicating his bike.
“Yeah, yeah, c’mon in, the light’s attracting moths,” Tony said, motioning him forwards impatiently.
Steve rolled his motorcycle into the garage, and Tony pulled the door down after him. Tony glanced up at a small gray box he’d recently mounted on the garage wall, but the indicator light was still green.
“So,” he said, “I heard you got rid of the bugs.”
“...How...?” Steve stared, hands pausing on the buttons of his trench coat.
“I have my ways,” Tony shrugged.
“Look me in the eyes,” Steve ordered, suddenly standing -very- tall in front of him.
“Okay...” Tony did it.
“Tell me you had nothing to do with those bugs, or what happened on 108th street,” Steve instructed.
“No, Steve. I had nothing to do with those, I swear,” Tony promised.
‘...108th street?’ Tony wondered.
“Okay,” Steve nodded. He took a step back, and sighed. “-Sorry about that, but I’m not sure who to trust right now.”
“Cross SHIELD, the Army, and Stark Industries off your list, and go from there,” Tony suggested, dryly.
Steve finished unbuttoning his coat, and managed to look both like a wet dream, and completely miserable.
“Do you want a drink?” Tony asked.
“I’ll take a Coke, if you have one,” Steve replied, with a slight smile.
“Second shelf down, right beside the opened bottle of Jack,” Tony told him, helpfully.
Steve got out two Cokes, and gave Tony one.
“-Thanks,” Tony motioned him to the cracked green leather couch to one side of the jukebox.
Steve took off his coat and shield, and sat.
“...You do have a refrigerator with food in it somewhere, right?” Steve asked.
“Yes, it’s upstairs,” Tony laughed, opening his soda.
Steve opened his too, and they drank.
“How did you find me here the first time?” Tony asked, suddenly.
“Hm-? Well, Power Man mentioned you ran a bike shop here in the village, or I doubt I would have,” Steve replied, guilelessly.
“I’ll kill him,” Tony said, to himself.
“What?” Asked Steve, frowning.
“-Nothing. -Inside joke,” Tony amended, hastily.
Steve looked a little wistful, but didn’t ask.
Tony drank his Coke in the deepening silence, and started wondering if he should put a song on.
“I’ve decided to take a road trip,” Steve said, instead.
“Where?” Tony asked.
“...I don’t know yet,” Steve admitted, and some of the tension seemed to lift from around his eyes.
“That’s a terrific way to start,” Tony smiled, and held out his Coke. Steve tapped his Coke against Tony’s, and they both drank.
“I feel like I’m running away from home,” Steve added- -and then paused, as if surprised at himself.
“Have you ever read anything by Kerouac?” Tony asked.
“No...”
“Maybe when this is all over, you should.”
“I’ve barely started ‘The Two Towers’, I’m afraid,” Steve smiled. “-Do you give all your friends books to read like this?”
“No,” Tony realized aloud, “-I don’t.”
“Well, thanks for helping me catch up then,” Steve told him, smiling warmly.
‘Oh my god I’m falling for him...’ Thought Tony.
“Listen, this road trip... you wouldn’t be planning to start it tomorrow morning, would you?” Tony asked.
“Yes, in just a few hours,” Steve replied, like a man who had just woken up from a dream.
“Why don’t you catch a couple hours’ sleep down here, and I’ll wake you up in time for breakfast?” Tony offered.
“But-” ‘-I just got here,’ Steve thought. Aloud he said, “-weren’t you in the middle of something?”
“I just finished,” Tony lied automatically, then corrected, “-with... what I’m doing on it tonight, I mean.”
“I wasn’t making fun of you, you know,” Steve said.
“What?” Tony blinked.
“For being well-read. It’s kind of nice to talk to somebody who is, on something besides science.”
“Oh,” Tony swallowed, “-okay.”
“-I went to art school for a while,” Steve added as a peace offering, “-I dropped out to join the US Army in forty-one.”
“...I was at MIT,” Tony replied carefully, “-I dropped out to manage S-the family business.”
“You father was a mechanic?” Steve asked, looking around the garage with interest.
“No, he was an electrical engineer,” Tony said, relaxing a little, “-I started this place on my own dime.”
Steve didn’t ask what had happened to ‘the family business’, and Tony didn’t offer to tell him.
“...Art school? Seriously?” Tony asked, after a moment’s reflection.
“Yes,” Steve smiled, as if pleased to have surprised him.
“Were you any good?” Tony asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. Good enough when I was in practice and it made me happy,” Steve shrugged.
“Show me,” Tony decided, on impulse.
“You want me to draw something for you?”
“Yes.”
Tony got up, fished his drafting notebook and some pencils out of the top drawer of a tan metal filing cabinet, and handed them over.
“What do you want me to draw?” Steve asked, still amused.
“Surprise me.”
Steve turned the notebook so Tony couldn’t see it, and began sketching. From time to time he glanced up mischievously, and Tony began to worry that Steve had decided to draw him.
When he got his notebook back though, Tony saw a pretty little dark-haired hula girl with a few backup-dancing palm trees sketched into the background behind her.
“Sign it,” Tony laughed, tapping a finger in the lower right-hand corner.
“All right,” Steve said, and signed it ‘S. Rogers’.
-
Tony’s kitchen, 06:40 AM (same day).
“-Oh, I know where that is. L’Institute Polytechnique is there now. You can get the best Belgian coffee, right over the border,” Tony was saying.
“No kidding? Last time I saw it, it was-” another man began.
Peter opened the door, and stopped short.
“Oh-! -Hello...” Peter said, awkwardly.
“Good morning,” said Captain America, brightly.
He and Tony were relaxing at the kitchen table drinking coffee, and from the look of the dishes in front of them and the delicious smells that lingered in the room, they’d already had breakfast.
Peter felt obscurely hurt.
“Cap, this is Peter Parker,” Tony introduced, “Pete, this is-”
“I know who that is,” Peter swallowed.
“Well, since you’ve already seen my face without the cowl you may as well call me Steve,” Steve offered, extending his hand.
His cowl was pushed down, though he was in full costume otherwise.
“Spider Man,” Peter blurted out, taking Steve’s hand and shaking it happily.
Tony choked slightly on his coffee.
“-Pleased to meet you, sir,” Peter added.
“You too,” Steve smiled, “-and I have a feeling we’ll meet again, but right now I should really be getting on the road.”
“You should have been there an hour ago,” Tony agreed, “-enjoy midtown.”
Steve shot Tony a sidelong look, and both men stood.
“Thank you, Tony. For everything,” Steve said, looking him in the eyes.
“Any time,” Tony replied, with a slight smile.
“I’ll return your book when I get back into town,” Steve promised, setting his dishes in the sink.
“It’s a dangerous business, going out your door...” Tony quoted, coffee mug in hand.
“-Don’t I know it,” Steve grinned, pulling on his trench coat.
“C’mon downstairs,” Tony said, “-I’ll let you out.”
“It was nice meeting you, Peter,” Steve said, turning.
“Bye Cap- -er- -Steve,” amended Peter.
Steve pulled his cowl up, and followed Tony downstairs into the garage.
“Hm,” Peter drummed his fingers quickly against the countertop, then stopped. He looked at the dishes in the sink. He peered curiously into the skillet on the stove, where there was still a hash brown and two fried eggs.
Peter had never known Tony to make hash browns...
A motorcycle roared to life outside, and faded away into the flow of early morning traffic. The garage door rattled down, and Tony came back upstairs. He dropped into his chair at the kitchen table, finished the dregs of his coffee, and sighed distractedly.
“That... did just happen, didn’t it?” Said Peter, carefully.
“Gee whiz, Spider Man, what do YOU think?” Tony asked, sarcastically innocent.
“No, seriously,” Peter insisted, “-Captain America just made you breakfast?”
“Yes Peter, he did,” Tony smiled.
“...Why?” Peter asked.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Tony said wryly, “-but if you’re hungry, the leftovers are in the skillet...”
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 2:40 PM.
“Captain Stark?”
The corners of Tony’s eyes tightened slightly in annoyance, but he looked up over the seat of the Softtail he was working on.
“Not anymore. You are...?” He prompted, instantly making his visitor feel both rude and unwelcome.
“Agent Sharon Carter, sir. I’m with SHIELD.”
“Uh-huh,” Tony agreed pleasantly, eyes flicking to the clear plastic ID holder clipped to the pocket of her sharp blue blazer.
He fished a red, greasy rag from the pocket of his coveralls, and began wiping his hands on it. They weren’t getting perceptibly cleaner.
Sharon’s lovely lips thinned a little.
“I can see you’re a busy man, so I’ll come straight to the point. Have you worked on anything for Captain America recently?"
Tony actually laughed. He looked around the empty garage as if Sharon had asked him to produce Cap out of thin air.
“Honey, if I had, how would I know? The man has a secret identity, same as most of the capes in this city...”
“Cap’s not just another cape. He’s one of ours, and-“
“Sure about that, are ya?” Tony smirked, eyebrows slightly raised.
Sharon stopped talking, took out a business card, and handed it to him with forced politeness.
“If you or any of your known vigilante associates should happen to see him, please see that he gets this.”
“I’ll get right on that,” Tony agreed, taking the card.
-
Tony’s kitchen, 1:04 AM.
Tony touched a pencil eraser to his lips, and frowned at the precise lines and notation he’d just added in his drafting notebook.
One of his fingers traced the cutouts in the steel frame of his actual arc reactor without looking down at it. It was still bright, even now...
Steve’s incredibly risky jump-start of the arc back at the train yard had produced an arc reaction of unprecedented power and longevity, but the device itself was slightly asymmetrical, which meant that the reaction still wouldn’t truly be a self-sustaining one.
Correcting that asymmetry would mean either re-manufacturing the plasma ionization ring, or creating another one from scratch. Simple enough. The real problem lay in switching out the old ring for the new, because he couldn’t disconnect the arc from his chest while it was still in operation without being reduced to a pile of carbon cinders by the resulting electrical discharge.
On the other hand he couldn’t simply let the arc run down until it was safe to disconnect, because the transistorized magnets that kept his heart from failing would run out of power at least forty thousand volts before that happened.
...This was, and always HAD been, the problem with his specialized transistors.
While they were very good at multiplying the potential of whatever device he combined them with, the raw voltage they required to make that trick work was well into the pentouple digits.
Since the arc reactor normally operated around one point five Gigajoules anyway, that wasn’t a pressing issue... but it did mean that nothing he possessed short of the arc itself could power his armor, even if by some miracle the magnets sustaining his heart could be hooked up to a suitably powerful outside source- -through all that goddamned gel that now covered the carefully sealed connectors- -without electrocuting him outright.
As things stood...
Well, there was no reason the arc reactor would fail within his lifetime, provided he kept the voltage fluctuations down by occasionally connecting it back to an ordinary AC power source, and didn’t draw off enough power at once to drop the reaction within the arc casing below 10,000 volts...
-
New York International airspace, 2,200 feet above sea level. 3:08 PM.
The saucer-like craft dodged frantically to avoid Iron Man’s repulsor blasts, and clawed for the upper atmosphere as fast as it’s quantum-engines would go. Tony was falling behind and he knew it, but there was always a chance that whoever was piloting that thing would make a mistake... he switched to onboard oxygen, and climbed higher.
Higher until the metal of the armor actually began to feel cold wherever it made contact with his bare skin, higher until the scattered thunderheads were left far behind, and the sky became the inside of a deep cobalt-blue bowl.
Higher until he had to yawn to pop his ears for the third time, and the flying saucer was barely a silver speck in his field of vision. He was losing speed fast now, until finally...
There.
Tony floated like a dandelion seed on the last layer of the Earth’s atmosphere that was thick enough for his bootjets to compress for upward flight.
He felt weightless. Dizzy. Drunk. Invincible. ...A little tingly.
Tony exhaled within the fragile shell of his helmet, and the cold Plexiglas covering his eye-slits fogged momentarily. ...it was so still up here. Pristine. Some people went their whole lives without seeing this...
Tony blinked, and jerked awake a hundred feet lower than he’d been a moment ago, adrenaline flooding his system. He opened the valve on his oxygen system a little wider, and took deep breaths.
There was a tiny electric-pink flash in the upper atmosphere, and Tony’s radar beeped negatively to let him know that it had lost the flying saucer entirely.
...Had that thing just jumped to light speed somehow? Tony wondered, his eyes widening a little. Or- -had he just witnessed the opening of a wormhole? Why a light flash in -that- spectral range, instead of the ripple of a space/time distortion effect?
Tony almost wished he could call the hostile alien craft back and ask.
Instead he turned in midair, leaning sideways casually until the cushion of compressed air slipped out from beneath his boots and he began to fell Earthwards, accelerating horribly fast. He began to feel lightheaded again, and shut off the flow of extra oxygen to the tube in his helmet. Tony broke mach two as he dived, arms stiff and streamlined at his sides. He watched New York resolve itself out into rivers and land, neighborhoods, individual blocks like tiny squares on a circuit board...
When he could pick out Greenwich Village visually, Tony cut back upwards in a huge loop, gravity-braking hard enough to bring tiny black dots swimming into his peripheral vision from the G-forces.
Mach two... one... and then sound came back in a howling rush.
Tony completed the loop at barely three hundred miles per hour, and did a barrel-roll over the Village just because he could.
He touched down with a crunch of tarred gravel on the roof of a defunct local nightclub, and walked out to the edge of the roof to people-watch for a while. Some long-haired kids with an acoustic guitar spotted him from the square below, pointed, and waved.
Tony waved back, but he stayed where he was.
-
The Baxter Building, 5:25 AM.
The far door opened, and Tony looked up sharply. Sue Richards padded across the room, and offered him a white coffee cup with a circled blue number four on the side. Tony took it and held it in both hands, but didn’t drink.
“-Thanks,” he said, staring dully down at the rising wisps of steam.
He was still in full armor except for the red and gold helmet sitting on the chair beside him, and his shoulders were slumped in a way Sue had never seen before.
“He hasn’t-” Tony began, looking up at her again.
“No, but Reed said that all traces of the Venom creature are out of Peter’s system now,” Sue assured him, creating an invisible forcefield-couch across from Tony’s chair and sitting down. “-You did the right thing by bringing him here, Tony.”
“I should have hauled him in days ago,” Tony sighed, running a hand back through his helmet-mussed hair.
“Maybe,” Sue agreed, honestly.
Tony remembered he was holding a cup of coffee, and drank.
-
The Baxter Building 8:28 AM (same day).
Peter woke up in a hospital room he’d never seen before. He wasn’t wearing his mask, and there was a huge bald guy made of orange stone sitting in the too-small chair beside his bed reading a newspaper. Peter suppressed the urge to jump at least twenty feet in any given direction and stick to a wall. Ben Grimm’s eyes swiveled downwards, and met his. Peter blinked.
“Hey... welcome back, kid...” Ben said kindly, closing his newspaper.
“Did I kill somebody?” Peter swallowed.
“Not so far as I heard,” Ben replied, frowning a little, “How d’ya feel?”
“...Okay. A little thirsty and weird. ...How did I get here?” Peter asked, sitting up on his elbows.
Ben gave Peter a look that Peter didn’t understand at once.
“Ol’ Shellhead brought’cha in. He’s waitin’ outside, actually,” Ben said, jerking a thumb towards the room’s only door.
“Why outside?” Peter asked.
“Ahh, that’s between him an’ Reed. Ya wanna see ‘im?”
Peter nodded.
Ben put his head out the door.
“Hey Tony! Yer kid’s awake!”
“He’s my student, not my kid,” Tony corrected with annoyance, squeezing past Ben into the room with an unscrupulous use of transistor-powered strength that left a long red scratch in the paint on the door.
“YOU,” Tony pointed at Peter as he strode up to the bed.
“Me?” Peter prompted.
“What day is it?” Tony demanded.
“Friday?” Peter guessed.
“WRONG. It is Saturday, and I have been chasing your tar-baby ass all over this city since midnight on Thursday.”
“...Thank you? Peter said, after a pause.
“You’re welcome, Spider. Now put your clothes back on,” Tony smiled.
“Venom’s gone, right? It feels like he’s gone...” Peter began.
“Yeah, Reed fixed that sucker but good,” Ben nodded, “-we got ‘im in a jar in the back if ya wanna see...”
“I... Venom was my costume, wasn’t he?” Peter guessed, uncomfortably.
“’Fraid so, kid. You ain’t much skinnier’n butane-breath though, an’ that gown ain’t your color. Hangonnasecond...” Ben began rummaging in a cabinet on the wall, pulling out sweatpants and other workout gear in various sizes.
Peter took a breath, and shut his eyes.
He tried not to remember the oily, pervasive touch of the symbiote’s skin meshing with his, and failed. ...He shuddered involuntarily.
A heavy metal gauntlet settled quietly on Peter’s left shoulder, and stayed there.
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 10:20 AM.
A sheet of heavy, translucent plastic was stretched across the jagged hole in the middle of the roll-down garage door. From inside, Steve heard the hard-edged whine of a circular saw slicing through sheet-metal.
He shut his Harley off, and walked up to the damaged door. The circular saw inside fell silent.
“Hi! Can I come in?” Steve called, around the edge of the plastic.
“Steve! Yeah, just step through,” Tony called back, setting down his saw.
The galvanized steel around the edges of the hole had actually been melted, Steve noticed as he lifted the plastic aside.
Inside, the garage floor was covered with bright metal shavings, and a series of what looked like replacement slats for the damaged garage door lay half-finished on a folding table to Steve’s right. Tony tugged off his gloves, and pushed his safety goggles up.
Steve looked from Tony to the hole melted in the door, and back again.
“I had a slight billing dispute with one of my customers,” Tony grinned. “-How was your ride?”
Steve paused, not sure how to put his thoughts into words.
He’d broken up what he’d been told was a riot at a small college campus, and learned that two of the Red Skull’s henchmen had been behind the whole thing.
He’d slept in the grass, woken up with the dawn, and watched a butterfly dry its wings.
He’d found Peggy Carter again, her mind broken by the last day he’d seen her during the war.
He’d learned that her sister Sharon, the lovely agent thirteen, had joined SHIELD for the express purpose of... well... stalking him, and that Nick Fury had figured it out months ago and decided to let her.
“Enlightening,” Steve replied, unzipping his bomber jacket and folding it over one arm. “-But it’s good to be back.”
“You look thirsty,” Tony observed.
“...You just want me to get you a beer, don’t you,” Steve realized, amused.
“Would you mind?” Tony grinned, hopefully.
Steve smiled and shook his head, but he got two beers out of the refrigerator and handed one over. Tony was dusted head-to-boots in fine metal shavings, and the damp fabric of his once-white A-line clung to his chest and the covered arc reactor in ways that were very difficult not to draw.
Steve opened his beer and drank, shutting his eyes.
Tony watched Steve’s lips close around the mouth of the brown glass bottle, and swallowed.
“So... what are you going to do now?” Tony asked, somewhat at random.
“I think...” Steve said slowly, lowering the bottle and studying a reflection in the glass, “...I’m going to concentrate on being an Avenger for a while. That way I can do some good as Captain America with a bunch of folks that...” Steve paused.
“...That you can trust?” Tony supplied.
“-Yeah,” Steve admitted, “The Avengers do assist SHIELD sometimes, but I get the feeling that Fury’s been trying to put things past me that he wouldn’t have tried on Ms. Van Dyne and the others, and I don’t like it.”
“Welcome to the future, Steve,” Tony said, wryly.
“Oh, I don’t know... nineteen seventy one’s not so bad,” Steve began, carefully.
“No?” Tony’s eyebrows lifted.
“No. It’s different, I‘ll grant you, and I never expected to be on a superhero team funded by a- -a fashion designer...”
‘Woman’, Tony’s amused mind translated, easily.
“-But if heroes today can represent all the things Hitler hated most, I think I can live with it.” Steve asserted.
“You mean like Power Man?” Tony asked.
“I mean Power Man, Misty Knight, Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch... you...” Steve listed.
Tony froze.
“...And me,” Steve finished, a little consciously.
“-You’re not Jewish, are you,” Tony stated, with a lopsided smirk.
“No.”
“Neither am I.”
“...Do you want to dance?” Steve asked.
“Yes,” Tony said without hesitation, “-C-12.”
---
-end-
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I think your worries about OOC stuff is wonderfully unfounded, these characters seemed just right for the setting you put them in.
Loved the ending exchange. So wonderfully subtle, yet right out there as well. Exactly what should be said is said in so many different words.
reading it again...
I also also love how your Tony, who cannot afford the expensive presents/inventions/offers of employment, makes people breakfast to show that he cares.
Re: reading it again...
Part of it is just that the Avengers have been through a few lineup changes by the time he joins in this universe(since Tony owned the submarine they were using when they found him in canon).
So they're like, 'cool, a well-respected tactician/team leader guy', instead of 'OMG we found Captain America! I wonder if he'll be friends with us?'
On the other side of the equation, Tony is subtly lonely as well.
...You notice how the less he trusts people, the more he plays up being a rude-and-crude mechanic? ...And how Steve got him to admit knowing the words, 'L’Institute Polytechnique'? (G)
Re: reading it again...
Yes, he's not the, Oh-Yeah-I-built-that-aren't-I-brilliant/Inventor Tony, and more the Oh-Yeah-I-can-fix-that-for-you/mechanic Tony.
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Although a quick read, it was a good one. Kudos!
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And dunno what to say about the snippet effect. That's just how I 'see' scenes.
It's actually a more fragmentary process than it looks, because I wrote half of these scenes out of order and assembled them in chronological order and -then- finished writing the rest.
...The first scene actually written was the one where Sharon comes looking for Cap and Tony makes her feel thoroughly unwelcome.
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And JBH um... it has a sequel. -Not finished yet.
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