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cap_ironman2010-01-02 02:01 am
otherhazards.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2010-01-02 02:01 am
Entry tags:
Fic: Knights of the Breakfast Table (Chapter 1)
Title: Knights of the Breakfast Table (sequel to ‘Juke Box Hero’)
Author: OtherHazards
Disclaimer: Neither the Marvel characters in this nor the titles, lyrics, artists, nor authors used are mine, but they sure are fun to borrow.
Rating: NC-17
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: Sexual situations, and some mission-related violence.
Pairing/Characters: Steve/Tony. Past Matt/Elektra and Matt/Elektra/Tony implied. (Co-starring Peter Parker, Danny Rand, Luke Cage, Warbird, Scarlet Witch, Thor, Quicksilver, Hawkeye, Misty Knight, and Elektra.)
Summary: Just as Steve and Tony are coming together, the rest of their world threatens to come apart...
=======================================================
The Iron Horse Garage, Greenwich Village NYC, 1971. 10:11 AM.
Tony felt the attack coming a half-second too late, and drove his left elbow back with his full strength behind it.
“Uh-!” It caught Steve fairly in the ribs, and he reacted equally fast, locking Tony’s left arm with his left hand, and catching Tony’s right wrist in his other one.
They both froze.
“...Steve?” Tony blinked.
“Ah- -yeah,” Steve managed, “-sorry about that.”
“You almost got ventilated with a Phillips screwdriver, you idiot!” Tony snapped, glaring over his shoulder. -A black-handled screwdriver and several long machine screws lay on a red cloth over the seat of the motorcycle in front of him.
“I won’t try that again,” Steve promised, loosening his hold.
“...What were you thinking? What were you -trying- to do?” Tony demanded, still shaken. Steve was probably wearing his scale-mail and leather costume under his street clothes, but still...
“This,” Steve said sheepishly, letting go entirely and putting his hands over Tony’s eyes.
Tony reached up and touched the backs of Steve’s hands with his own, then let out a breath.
“...Idiot,” Tony whispered again, and leaned back a little until his shoulders made contact with Steve’s chest.
Steve hugged him, and Tony shut his eyes.
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 4:40 PM.
There was a handwritten sign taped to the freezer door.
“Out of order,” Peter read aloud, amused. “-Didn’t this thing break on you last August too?”
“It’s old,” Tony shrugged, without looking up from his repulsor-gauntlet wiring.
“No, it’s -jinxed-,” Peter argued, “-every time you build a new suit of armor, the freezer goes out. It’s like rain and a freshly waxed car...”
“Uh-huh,” Tony replied vaguely, threading a tiny white wire through a metal eyelet.
“I mean seriously... what does you building a new suit of armor have to do with things freezing?” Peter added.
Tony looked up.
“Why don’t you tell me?” He suggested, carefully.
“Well obviously it’s not a normal freezer. I mean, you don’t keep equipment around that you don’t have a use for, and the only thing in that freezer is a half eaten tub of mint-chocolate-chip ice cream, a couple rolls of film, and a bucket of -batteries-...”
“...Why is the ice cream half-eaten?” Tony asked, suspiciously.
“I...” Peter began.
“Peter, you’re a chemist. Silver Nitrate is terrible for you, and so is Cadmium, Potassium Hydroxide-”
“Bit by radioactive spider, remember? And if it’s so unsafe, why do -you- keep it in there?” Peter countered.
“I feed it to people I don’t like,” Tony told him, dryly.
“No you don’t, that was a new container. I think you keep it in there to make it look like you don’t know what you’re doing, so people won’t ask you what the freezer’s really for.”
“Go on...” Tony smiled.
“I think it’s a furnace, or some kind of experimental microwave device,” Peter guessed.
“You have a very active imagination,” Tony smirked.
“Okay, then it’s something else...” Peter translated, undaunted. “...What would happen if I opened the door?”
“If you could GET it open past the dummy-locks I installed, I’d be taking you to the emergency room,” Tony admitted.
“What would my injuries be?” Peter asked.
“Shrapnel, among other things. If you got really lucky, you might get an upgrade out of it,” Tony joked, tapping the glowing front of his arc-reactor.
“Shrapnel,” Peter said, carefully.
“Yes.”
“You don’t -build- explosive weapons.” Peter noted.
“No,” Tony agreed.
“-But there’s something metal inside there that would explode if I opened this door,” Peter said, tapping the front of the freezer.
“Yes,” Tony nodded.
“...Kind of like a clay pot shattering in a kiln?” Peter guessed.
“Something like that, yeah.”
“-This really IS a freezer, isn’t it?” Peter realized.
“Of course it’s a freezer,” Tony smirked.
“Okay, what parts of your armor do you have to process cryogenically?” Peter asked.
Tony grinned, and said nothing.
“Would you like some ice cream?” Peter suggested, innocently.
“There’s some black cherry you can have in the upstairs freezer,” Tony told him, “-but you better leave some for me.”
“Roger that, boss,” Peter grinned, and disappeared upstairs.
-
Avengers Tower, NYC. 8:20 AM.
“Whose record is this?” The Scarlet Witch asked, stopping the turntable of the record player in the common room that had been left playing when the mission alarm sounded.
“Tis not mine, of that you may be certain,” Thor said, on his way in to the kitchen.
Quicksilver ran over to read the record’s label momentarily, sniffed dismissively, then vanished elsewhere without comment, satisfied that no-one had purloined one of his records.
“’Up on the Roof’, by The Drifters? Going once...?” Wanda called, holding the record up.
“Ooo, I like that song,” Warbird said, taking the record from her.
“-Just give it back to me when you’re done,” Cap smiled, coming in and pushing down his cowl one-handed.
“This is yours?” Warbird blinked, “-I thought you didn’t like anything made after...”
...the rest of us were born...
“Well- -I borrowed it from a friend, actually...” Steve said, trying to sound casual.
“Please, please tell me that someone was Nick Fury, because I could really use the blackmail material,” Warbird grinned, one eyebrow raised.
“Nope, sorry,” Steve replied, his smile fading a little.
“Too bad,” Warbird decided, setting the record back on the turntable and placing the needle back at the beginning.
“...Yes,” Steve agreed, glancing down at the back of one of his gloves.
’When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space
On the roof, it's peaceful as can be
And there the world below can't bother me
Let me tell you now-‘
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 11:03 PM.
Tony flopped onto the two-thirds of the cracked green leather couch that Steve wasn’t occupying, and used the blonde’s jean-covered thigh for a pillow.
Steve closed his book, set it aside, and looked down at Tony thoughtfully.
“...What?” Tony asked, looking up at him with a commendably straight face.
Steve sunk his fingers into the back of Tony’s dark hair and kissed him, lifting up slightly.
“Mm...” Tony’s eyes closed, and one hand curled around the back of Steve’s neck.
Steve broke the kiss after a long moment, then gave him another one just as good.
Tony’s mind helpfully donated some hints about what to do with flexibility like that...
When Steve drew back a second time, Tony’s face was lightly flushed, and hungry. Tony started to sit up, but he felt Steve’s fingers tighten in his hair, -just- enough.
Leverage. Angles. Totally unnoticeable, if he hadn’t tried to move...
Steve smiled enigmatically, and watched the centers of Tony’s blue-gray eyes darken.
Then he let go.
Tony’s eyes narrowed, and he moved. His knees sunk into the couch on either side of Steve’s hips, and he took the blonde’s strong-jawed face in both hands to kiss him from an up-angle.
Tony felt big hands close around the small of his lower back, and then the unique, bark-like texture of Steve’s mail shirt against his skin, through three layers of cotton.
There was something deeply sacrilegious about having his dick pressed squarely against where the star was, but Tony decided he could live with it if Steve could.
Especially since Steve seemed to wa-ohmygod...
Ass-grab. Good one. Fingers gentle and firm, kneading thoughtfully...
Tony pressed back down into the kiss he’d inadvertently broken, drawing Steve out, demanding -full- participation and making sure the other man had very little time to think. Just in case.
Steve’s hands were at the collar of his green coveralls now, one on each side, pulling Tony down, and forwards. -And then Steve was moving him back, and Tony blinked, looking down at him questioningly.
“Can I see it?” Steve asked quietly, holding the tab of Tony’s coverall zipper between finger and thumb.
“Yeah, go ahead...” Tony nodded, licking his lips.
Steve unzipped Tony’s coveralls to just above waist-level, and pushed them down off his shoulders. He lifted the edge of the shirt Tony wore underneath, and there was a brief tangle of clothing as both of them tried to pull it off at once. Tony won possession by leaning back momentarily, and tossed the shirt over his shoulder without looking at it.
Steve paused, hands cupped around Tony’s back just beneath his shoulder blades, fair skin painted in pale blue light and shadows. Steve’s blonde hair fell forward a little from Tony’s angle, and the light from the arc reactor made the very edge of it glow white, like exposed fiber-optic cable.
Steve looked up, and smiled.
Tony kissed him.
One of Steve’s hands closed over the warm disk of the arc, and his fingers brushed the slightly uneven skin around its base. Tony squirmed a little and caught his breath, breaking the kiss.
“Sensitive?” Steve asked.
“A- a little, but-”
“Want me to st-”
“NO,” Tony cut him off.
Steve’s breath ghosted across his chest just above the arc, and he brought his right hand into play, doing something to the curve of Tony’s lower back with the ball thumb that-
“Nng... Jesus...” Tony swore, and this time when his hips rocked forwards, he didn’t try to stop them.
Steve’s hands moved together across his back, not quite a tease, but mapping him somehow. Finding his landmarks, memorizing the terrain- -and incidentally, pressing them closer together. Tony’s right hand fisted in the back of Steve’s collar, cloth and cowl alike, and a small frown of concentration settled in between the dark, clean curves of his eyebrows.
-Eyebrows like that would need charcoal, Steve thought, automatically.
Thinking in terms of art had been his way of justifying his thoughts for quite some time, and even now he couldn’t shake it. Couldn’t fully admit that he wanted to not only look, but touch, and taste...
Part of his mind wasn’t ready. Part of his mind was still scared, and if he pulled Tony’s mind apart far enough with his hands, he could watch the other man lose it from a safe distance again, and not think about what it might be like to hold him naked.
To slide against him, and feel- -that-!
Steve gripped Tony’s hips in both hands, stilling them.
“...Hnnnh?” Tony demanded his breathing uneven.
“I- want to try something,” Steve swallowed, eyes still shut.
Tony’s eyes opened, looking down at the other man intently.
“What did- -you have in mind?” He asked, catching his breath.
“I want to...” Steve began, and though he managed a wild glance up at Tony’s face for a moment, the rest of that sentence wouldn’t come.
“-Get naked with me?” Tony prompted helpfully, one end of his mustache quirking up.
“No, I- -not yet. I want to, uh...” Steve blushed deeply. He was getting really, really angry with himself.
Steve’s emotion translated physically into a tightening of his hands and a partial groping of Tony’s ass. Tony braced his hands on Steve’s shoulders hard, and bit his lower lip for a moment.
“Steve, just- -whatever it is, do it- slow an- and I’ll tell you if I don’t like it, because if you can’t even say it it’s got to be good, and I- -yeah just... let’s do this,” Tony argued quickly, when he could talk again.
Steve nodded, visibly relieved, and took a breath. He pulled the zipper of Tony’s green coveralls the rest of the way down, let go of them so they fell to mid-thigh and palmed Tony’s dick through his boxers. Tony’s fingers tightened abruptly around Steve’s shoulders, and Steve glanced up with concern.
“-M’good,” Tony panted, “-p- -please continue...”
Steve palmed him again, and ran his free hand along Tony’s back, returning to familiar territory, then stroking down further. He ran his thumb across the head cautiously, and felt thin cotton, and firm, living tissue beneath it. This wasn’t the thickly-sewn zipper of pair of jeans, or the proverbial ‘something in his pocket’, this was -Tony-.
This was someone just as breakable as he was, just as excited as he was.
This was a man who wanted him. Very, very much.
Steve was hard too, uncomfortably hot and confined beneath layers of khaki and well-fitting blue leather. ...But seeing Tony like this, touching him and watching his eyes slip closed, lips parting-
It was okay.
It was fun, and if he was hard enough to feel his own pulse inside his costume, that was okay too. It was something... he could have. ...Something he could guide Tony’s fingers to, and probably watch the other man’s eyes darken in covetous glee.
If he could find his courage now, and-
Steve bent his head, and nuzzled Tony through his boxers. It was a careful movement, all barely-contacting warmth, and the scratch of his own pale five o’clock shadow against thin cotton, and a darkly complex scent that made him harder, and suddenly thirsty.
Steve swallowed, and lifted the waistband of Tony’s boxers down, careful not to snag him. That was never fun, and since he knew-
There.
Steve had rarely seen another man’s crotch at close range before, and never when he was allowed to stare openly. He could chicken out at this point, the way he had once turned down a very interesting offer from Pvt. Finn in Marseilles...
The scent was stronger now, like clean sweat, and the shadows in concrete-floored boxing-gym locker rooms, and maybe a faint hint of machine oil.
Steve glanced up, unwittingly breathing lightly across Tony’s skin.
Tony’s eyes caught Steve’s glance, and held it fast. Tony was fascinated. Horrified. Riveted. No longer altogether sane, but watching Steve’s explorations of his person as if he couldn’t quite believe what his eyes were seeing.
Steve’s doubts came back in a rush, and he swallowed, his throat going dry.
Tony reached down, and cupped the side of Steve’s face in his hand. The light of the arc reactor made him look more than human somehow, like an angel with a strangely misplaced halo. He brushed Steve’s lips with his thumb, and his face became calm. Steve’s lips parted, and he licked Tony’s fingerprint.
Tony’s eyes widened a little, and he caught his breath.
“You- -oh. I thought you’d want me to-” Tony broke off, and bit the inside of his lip.
“...Would you?” Steve asked, still watching his face.
“Yes,” Tony admitted, a slight exhalation of air that sounded as if it -felt- good to make.
“I- -need to-” Steve’s words fell apart again.
“-Okay,” Tony nodded quickly, now not sure exactly -what- Steve’s plan was, but having deduced that it involved one or both of them getting a blowjob.
Tony was right, and the staring wonder of the moment that he realized Steve was actually serious was something he would never forget. It wasn’t the slight touch of roughness of as the other man’s cheek brushed his stomach, or the soft touch of lips or tongue, it was Steve’s hair. That outdated forehead-curl that never seemed to stay combed to the side once he’d put his costume on over it. ...The faint touch of that swirl of hair, bright as summer wheat straw, against skin Tony hadn’t once thought Steve would want to see, let alone taste...
That was when it became real.
Tony’s stomach clenched a little, and he shivered. It felt good, just like-
-No.
Tony forced his eyes to stay open, forced himself to watch this, and accept the reality.
Ca- -no, Steve Rogers was blowing him.
And... ...not even very well, but the sight of this beautiful man making the attempt would have been worth it even if it -hadn’t- felt good... which it did.
Tony became aware of the fact that he’d leaned his ass back against Steve’s hands at some point, and that Steve was holding him from falling further backwards without apparent effort.
Which was extremely hot, but... ...damn, Steve was really bad at this, maybe he should- ...naah.
Tony slid a hand into Steve’s soft, long-banged hair, and flexed his fingers, smiling.
“-You okay?” Tony asked, hand on Steve’s shoulder.
Steve nodded, and coughed some more, sleeve held across his mouth self-consciously.
Tony tried desperately to keep a straight face, but his afterglow this time was of the giggly variety, which made that next to impossible. Recovering, Steve caught sight of Tony’s tremblingly amused expression and groaned, shutting his eyes.
“-That bad?”
“Ah... yeah,” Tony admitted, “-but you didn’t give up, and you looked great doing it,” he assured him.
Steve glanced up dubiously. Tony kissed him.
Tasting himself on Steve was strange but not unpleasant, a mixture like ...hamburgers and raspberry sauce. Both not bad individually, but he’d never really imagined tasting them together. Steve was-
Tony broke the kiss, and looked down at the blonde thoughtfully.
“-You’re braver than I thought,” he realized, aloud.
Steve smiled wryly.
Tony kissed him again, more softly this time. When the kiss ended, Steve ran a forefinger across the carefully trimmed line of Tony’s mustache. Tony wiggled it like Samantha on ‘Bewitched’, and grinned. Steve missed the cultural reference by a mile, but grinned back anyway.
Tony glanced down at the front of Steve’s pants, then back up.
“...I owe you one, don’t I?”
“I’d say you do,” Steve agreed. -He would have felt embarrassed to ask for this half an hour ago, but after Tony had all but laughed at him...
“No time like the present,” Tony suggested.
“No,” Steve smiled, “-there really isn’t.”
“-Scoot forward,” Tony instructed, taking a handful of his clothes and moving off the couch.
“Like this?” Steve asked.
“More... okay,” Tony held up a hand. He knelt on the bunched fabric of his coveralls just in front of the couch, and ran his hands up Steve’s thighs just because he could.
Steve naturally sat with his knees apart, and Tony had always considered that a promising sign.
Time to find out if he was right, but Steve was looking a little nervous again. Tony bit the inside of Steve’s right knee through his pants.
“Hey-!” Steve glared, surprised.
“Just seeing if you were still awake,” Tony shrugged, unapologetically.
“You’d better not try that elsewhere,” Steve muttered.
“Don’t worry, you’re in good hands,” Tony promised, undoing the first of Steve’s belts.
Steve, in Tony’s considered opinion, wore far too many layers of clothing. When attacked like a wrapped Christmas present however, those layers yielded.
Steve caught his breath as Tony released him, but shut his eyes and managed not to lose it.
“Hips up.”
“Hm?” Steve blinked.
“I have to-”
“-Oh, right. ...Wait, wouldn’t I be on the couch without-” Steve began.
“MY couch, I don’t care,” Tony assured him firmly, working Steve’s double layer of pants down where he wanted them and pushing him back down.
Steve’s thighs were thick, powerful in the way a racecar’s engine was, and long only because they were built in proportion to the rest. The lower edge of Steve’s shirt showed a tantalizing glimpse of -amazingly- good abs when he leaned back, and the scratchy-soft dusting of blonde hairs across his lightly flushed pale skin were barely half a shade darker than the forehead-curl that had so entranced Tony earlier.
“...You aren’t cut,” Tony noted, looking down at Steve’s dick appreciatively.
“I was-” Steve swallowed, “-it, ah- -it grew back.”
Tony took him reverently to hand, and examined the tip more closely.
“Because of the super soldier serum?” Tony guessed, fascinated.
“U-hmn-” Steve whimpered, nodding.
“Well, this should be interesting...” Tony smirked, and ran his tongue along the base of the head.
Steve’s right hand clenched into a fist at his side, containing the otherwise dangerous strength of his body. He shut his eyes, and fell into the sensation blind, trusting the other man to get him where he needed to go.
Tony played with whatever caught his interest, but he didn’t try anything too kinky. This was about mutual fun, not advanced technical skill that Steve would no doubt attempt to memorize on the fly...
...The fact that a martial artist as gifted as Steve was probably could learn things that way lent credence to Tony’s theory that Steve had probably never received a good blowjob before, though he clearly knew what one was supposed to look like.
Steve was a live wire under him, a study in barely-restrained power. He was improbably clean with a taste of well-kept leather, solid, gorgeous...
Tony pushed him, testing the blonde’s reactions, stealing glances upwards from time to time and watching each lick, each smoothly wet shift of his mouth unfold across Steve’s unguarded face.
It was over far too soon for both of them, in a choked exclamation that looked almost painful, and a short snap of Steve’s hips that Tony put a stop to by pinning them down with both hands, -hard-. Steve slumped back against the couch to catch his breath, and put a hand clumsily onto the back of Tony’s hair. Tony swallowed carefully, and eased off. He straightened up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand absently.
Steve’s blue eyes weren’t quite focused yet, but there was something in them that made Tony stop moving.
Steve raised Tony’s chin with two fingers, looked straight into him, and put a hand on his shoulder. Tony looked back at him silently, and had the strangest feeling that he was being ...knighted.
A sudden unorthodox mental picture of King Arthur and Sir Gawain occurred to him, and Tony actually blushed a little.
“Get up,” Steve ordered quietly, smiling down at him.
Tony stood.
Steve took his hand, and pulled him forwards, guiding Tony back across his lap.
Tony sank down against him skin to skin and sighed shakily, off-balance and feet still half-tangled in his loose coveralls. He was partly hard again and Steve wasn’t, but damn this position felt good...
Steve hugged him close, and kissed the side of Tony’s neck just below his ear.
...That felt pretty good too.
-
Central Park, NYC. 2:28 PM.
“I got the T-Rex,” Iron Man decided, looking up.
“Go,” Cap nodded, “-Spider-Man, you’re with me. Warbird, you’re our eyes in the sky, you and Quicksilver keep any meat-eaters from getting out into the city. Scarlet Witch, Thor, do something about that time portal, NOW!”
Warbird took off straight up. Tony and Quicksilver were already gone. Thor caught Scarlet Witch around the waist in one powerful arm, and threw his hammer deeper into the park.
The Velociraptors crept out from beneath the tree line on their left, and eyed the remaining red and blue humans with interest. They seemed to have no visible claws or fangs, and the smaller one didn’t seem to have jaws at all...
“Those things are picturing us on a sesame seed bun,” Peter observed, uneasily.
“-See if they’ve got a taste for web,” Cap said with a tight smile, and let fly with his shield.
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 8:31 AM.
“Hey Tony,” Peter said, waving a hand in front of Tony’s sunglasses.
“Mrbr... f’koff,” Tony responded from the couch, waving him away.
“Ah. Late night, huh?” Peter smirked, “-does this mean I can finish the frozen waffles upstairs?”
“Notta chance. There’s pancakes,” Tony pointed, without getting up.
“Don’t take this the wrong way boss, but were you still drunk when you made them? Because after that caper incident, I-” Peter began.
“UPSTAIRS, critic,” Tony growled, flipping him off in the general direction of the kitchen.
“Gee, tell me how you really feel...” Peter muttered, trudging upstairs anyway.
He came downstairs half an hour later, after a round of very passable banana-walnut pancakes. Tony was snoring gently, and he didn’t appear to have moved.
Peter considered his boss a moment, and decided to leave him alone. -Those pancakes had been pretty good.
He appropriated Tony’s (his) battered desk instead, and went over this week’s accounts.
One of the things that had surprised Peter when he’d first come to work here was how many sidelines Tony maintained in addition to the motorcycle repair shop. It was a good thing too, or Peter suspected the shop would have gone under long ago.
There was a ‘Heathcliff Metals’ that sent in checks of varying size and lists of ‘metals to look out for if your friend happens to acquire them’...
‘Century Cryogenics’, that paid occasional repair bills to someone named Mitch Germaine, who maintained a joint checking account with Tony but didn’t seem to exist aside from this...
Something about a computer system upstate with a P.O. Box that Peter had never been able to get the straight story on...
The list went on and on, and Peter still wasn’t sure Tony was showing him the whole thing. He’d met a lot of strange people tracking down the names on Tony’s list...
Peter was busy with the books for about an hour, and then he got... bored. He’d hoped he could talk to Tony about what was going on with Harry, but hung over his boss was very little good to man or beast. For one thing, the man smelled like a used bar-mat, and for another he-
Peter stopped.
That’s what was off.
He couldn’t smell much of anything, except maybe... pancakes.
Peter walked up the wall onto the ceiling, and let himself down on a slowly-spun web line right above Tony.
No. Tony hardly smelled like booze at all. ...Yet here he was, racked out on the couch pretending to be hung over. Curiouser and curiouser.
Very stealthily, Peter picked off Tony’s sunglasses.
Nothing. Asleep. Peaceful. Faint shadows under his eyes, but those were just the permanent ones.
Okay, plan ‘B’.
“Boo.”
Tony woke up with a start, and lashed out with his right hand straight up, palm upwards.
He missed Peter’s nose by a clean inch and a half, though if he’d been wearing a repulsor gauntlet, Peter would have been history.
Peter started back slightly, but maintained his balance upside-down.
Tony sank back down, shut his eyes, and sighed through gritted teeth.
“Good morning, Peter,” he said, in a voice that was dangerously calm.
“-You’re not hung over,” Peter stated, holding the sunglasses out of range pointedly.
Tony smiled then. It started slow and devious at either corner of his mustache, and spread into a look of such smug complacency that Peter actually retreated up his web line about half a foot.
“No,” Tony agreed, “-I’m not.”
“Can you never, ever smile up at me like that again, and we just, ah, forget this conversation ever happened?” Peter asked, hopefully.
“Not a chance,” Tony grinned.
“-Nuts,” Peter winced.
“Remember that talk we had about why I didn’t want to open the day after Matt and Elektra’s New Year’s party?” Tony began, mercilessly.
“Ohmygod don’t finish that thought,” Peter pleaded.
“What’s the matter? I thought you said Elektra was hot...” Tony teased.
“Yeah, but...”
“Yes, he’s a natural redhead. Get over it,” Tony said, flatly.
“You’re making my head hurt,” Peter accused, “-on purpose.”
“I’m trying to get you to stop screaming ‘eww, cooties!’ every time I bring gay stuff up, actually,” Tony admitted, relenting.
“Umm... why?” Peter wanted to know.
“It closes doors, Peter. The more unusual an occupation is, or the more rules of society you have to break to get into it in the first place, the better the chances are that you had to look at what you -really- wanted instead of just copying everyone else. And costumed heroes... you follow me?”
“Are you trying to hint that I’m outnumbered, here?” Peter asked, uneasily.
Tony glanced to the side momentarily, thinking.
“-No. But by freaking out like a little schoolgirl, you may be making people less likely to work with you without even realizing you’re doing it,” Tony explained.
“That doesn’t mean I have to like-” Peter began.
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Great. Something else to think deep thoughts about,” Peter said, dubiously.
“Think fast,” Tony advised, dryly. “-I’m dating Steve, you know.”
“Steve, Steve?” Peter asked.
“Yes,” Tony sat up, and rested his elbows on his knees.
“Well...” Peter considered, chin in hand, “-Steve’s not so bad.”
“-My thoughts exactly,” Tony smiled, stretching his arms up over his head.
-
Tony’s kitchen, 9:23 PM.
Steve let himself in through the skylight, and dropped lightly onto the worn linoleum floor next to the kitchen table.
The bedroom door was closed, so Steve knocked.
“Come in,” Tony called through it. -He’d already seen who his visitor was on the TV in the corner... though since there was no longer anything in front of the motion-detector cameras, it was back to playing channel eleven on mute.
Steve opened the door, and made out Tony stretched out on top of the blankets by the choppy, multicolored light of a cigarette commercial, and the unusually steady glow of the arc reactor. A round black cable about the thickness of a shading pencil lay against Tony’s chest in a loose curve and disappeared off the far side of the bed.
“Hey,” said Steve, unconsciously lowering his voice as if he was in a library.
“Mmm. S’good to see you...” Tony replied, “-put your hand on the bed frame, would ya?”
Steve set his shield down against the bedside table, pulled off his red leather gloves, and touched one of the brass curves of the headboard, grounding himself. He pushed back the cowl of his costume, and left his gloves on the bedside table. Tony’s eyes had half closed again, but he opened them when he felt the mattress dip, and smiled.
Steve leaned over and kissed him.
Tony ran his fingers lightly across the scales of Steve’s mail shirt. At this angle they hung loose, each tiny Duraluminum plate kept from actually pivoting straight downwards by the two scales contacting it from the row above.
“We did good out there today,” Steve said, when the kiss ended.
“Yeah, we did,” Tony agreed.
“Libraries are always special,” Steve reflected, sitting back on an elbow and stroking Tony’s shoulder idly with his fingers. “-They’re like hospitals and post offices-”
“They have flagpoles you can use for flashy aerial attacks?” Tony teased.
“Come on, you know what I mean... They’re different. Those buildings are for everyone, not just a single company or owner,” Steve explained.
“...My father had a library,” Tony said, his mind wandering.
“Oh? What kind of books?” Steve asked, carefully.
“Everything, it seemed like,” Tony smiled, “-my mom was into Victorian stuff though, so there was a lot of Bronte sisters and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle...”
“What else?” Steve asked, hand wandering onto Tony’s chest.
“Technical journals... some books on the history of the French revolution- -those were really dry... and this set of red-covered encyclopedias that went on forever... I saw my first set of breasts in one of those.”
Steve made a slight choking noise, and glanced down at the sheets.
“Oh don’t give me that, she was wearing a bra,” Tony laughed.
“What was a picture of a girl in her dainties doing between the pages of an encyclopedia?” Steve asked, not quite laughing.
“She was IN the encyclopedia, actually,” Tony smiled, “-‘A brassiere lifts a Polynesian into the twentieth century.’ ...Which I always thought was unfair, because I’m sure she would’ve looked great without it, and the color didn’t work with her tanned skin tone at all...” Tony rambled.
“Is this why you like the hula girl song?” Steve teased.
“Hm,” Tony considered, “-could be. C’mere, kiss.”
Steve kissed him.
Tony hooked a couple of fingers into the front collar of Steve’s costume as he did so, and gave Steve a dirty look when he tried to sit up.
“I know what you’re doing, you know.”
“It’s very important to practice resisting interrogations, Captain Stark,” Steve pointed out, virtuously.
“I’ll remember you said that, Private Rogers,” Tony promised.
Steve kissed him again. Tony let go of his collar.
“What are you reading now?” Steve asked, sitting back again.
“-Just so you know, I’ve been waiting to tell you about this...” Tony explained clearly, “-and it has nothing to do with your little ‘interrogation’ fantasy.”
“I didn’t say-”
“Bullshit,” Tony grinned, “-but just for the record, I’ve enjoyed being ‘interrogated’ too.”
Steve glanced over at the plugged-in arc reactor for a moment, then quickly at the back of his hand as it rested against Tony’s chest.
“So, what are you reading?” He asked.
“Universal Multiplicity and Parallelism in the Modern Age, six-eighty-eight edition,” Tony told him.
“That’s a mouthful.”
“Yeah, you should have seen SHIELD’s title before they made it into an acronym,” Tony snorted, “-but this is Reed Richards’s new book.”
“What’s it -really- about?” Steve asked.
“Mostly it’s Reed alternately bragging and geeking out about the fact that he can travel to alternate realities,” Tony began derisively, “-but it’s fascinating. Apparently Reed has dimension travel figured out in at least four different timelines, and get this- -this book wasn’t even written by the Reed Richards from THIS reality... he just edited a copy one of his alternate selves wrote so that it wouldn’t give away too much about the other realities it’s been published in. The Reed we know owns an original thirteen-twenty AND a six-sixteen edition, but damn him he won’t share. It’s okay though. I’ve caught a few things he missed while he was editing this one...”
-
Centralia, Pennsylvania, 10:27 AM.
“What IS this place...?” Peter breathed, staring out at the deserted town. A thin layer of smoke seemed to be everywhere, lingering and turning the horizon into a half-guessed object.
“It’s called Centralia. There’s a coal vein under the town that caught fire back in sixty two, and it’s still burning,” Iron Man explained in his rough, mechanical voice.
“Ah... excuse me?” Peter stared.
“-Put your mask on,” Iron Man ordered.
Peter fitted his rebreather into place, and pulled his cloth Spider-Man mask back down over it. Peter’s spider-sense was going crazy, but then, he already knew there was something wrong out there...
Iron Man opened a panel in the red armor covering his left forearm, flipped two toggle switches, and slapped it shut. The unibeam projector on his chest crackled for a moment, then subsided to a steady, dangerous glow.
They exited the chopper one by one, half the often-disavowed New York hero underground called out and mobilized in this, the East Coast’s darkest hour.
Spider Man, Misty Knight, Iron Man, Elektra, Power Man, Iron Fist, Hawkeye...
Tony frowned for a moment.
Something was obvious. Something big. Something he should have seen earlier...
!
Tony took two steps back, and closed an armored fist around the barrel of the helicopter’s fifty-cal door gun.
“Come on Iron Man,” the copilot yelled back at him, “-we’ve gotta go! The Lava Men were seen due west of-“
“The hell they were!” Iron Man cut him off, speaking both loudly enough to be heard over the idling rotors and directly onto the helicopter’s designated radio frequency.
“WHAT?” Hawkeye demanded.
“It’s a setup,” Iron Man yelled bluntly, “-everybody back on the bus! NOW!”
“You’re wrong, Iron Man! You’re abandoning-” the copilot began.
Nobody was listening, and half the people on the ground were already racing back for the chopper.
Iron Man heard the pilot telling the door-gunner to fire over his helmet radio, and knew that he’d been right.
He wrenched the fifty-cal’s gun barrel down like a licorice twist before the gunner had time to decide whether to act on the illegal order.
He stared the gunner in the face, and turned up all the indicator lights in his helmet for a moment, making the eye slits in his face-plate appear to flash white. The gunner put his hands up, and paled.
“Smart move,” Iron Man told him.
By now almost everyone was aboard, and Power Man and Elektra were up front keeping an eye on the now thoroughly cowed flight crew.
The empty town outside the helicopter was still unchanged, ominously peaceful like the moment before a dream turned into a nightmare.
Tony swung aboard last, and sat in the open doorway as the chopper lifted off, one boot braced on the helicopter skid outside.
Suddenly, his radar beeped a warning.
The pilots saw it too, and began screaming into their headsets about friendly fire, and standing down. The jets didn’t change course.
Now that they were all necessarily on the same team, the helicopter’s handling improved remarkably. They couldn’t outrace the two fighter jets that were bearing down on them, but Hawkeye made things unpleasant for the jets with flare arrows, and Iron Man fired a canister of chaff at them. Some of the shredded metal got sucked into the lead jet’s starboard engine, which instantly died in a stalled-out burst of thick black smoke, and forced him to abandon the chase.
The second one was still gaining, but-
There was a sudden flash in the smoggy reek behind them, then half a heartbeat later a deep, shattering boom, and a bone-jarring shockwave.
Centralia, Pennsylvania had become a gaping hole into hell.
The Helicopter was thrown forwards by the blast, and it pin-wheeled in midair for a few seconds before the pilots’ regained control. Hawkeye shut his eyes tight, gripped the overhead bar, and put his free hand over his mouth quickly.
Then it was over, and the silence was deafening over the steady beat of the rotors overhead.
Tony looked his shaken team over.
All brave, all good men and women with undeniable talents and powers, but none of them with the power to survive the blast of a fuel/air bomb and the long minutes without oxygen until the air cleared afterwards. ...If it ever -would- have cleared, in Centralia.
Every one of these heroes had had a run-in with the law, or had a reputation for ‘authority issues’. And of them all, only Iron Man could fly...
Casualties of the Centralia explosion.
Another sad statistic that whoever had paid for the gas in this helicopter could have told Cap and the rest of the ‘law-abiding’ heroes with a straight face...
And gotten away with it.
Tony felt cold, and sick. He gripped the edge of the open door hard enough to squeeze the shape of his armored fingers into the metal, and focused on the anger he felt building.
Somebody- -and he would find out who- -had tried to kill his team.
His eyes flicked to Peter.
His -family-.
“Hey boss-?” Peter said, hesitantly.
Tony blinked.
“Yeah, what is it?”
“Aren’t you going to do anything about him?” Peter pointed out the open doorway towards a tiny triangular shape caught in a flat spin. Both the jet’s engines were dead.
Tony was surprised he hadn’t spotted it earlier himself, but he also had to admit privately that he’d rather let the bastard fall.
...But saving one of the pilots who had tried to shoot them down would be an excellent way to start countering whatever cock-and-bull story the powers that be in Washington were doubtless cooking up for their unwelcome return. He couldn’t do anything less, really. ...Not in front of Peter.
“Good eye,” Iron Man said shortly, and leapt out of the open helicopter door, firing his boot-jets.
-tbc-
Note: The encyclopedia set with the entry about the Polynesian girl in the bra is real. I believe they were published in the wonderfully culturally sensitive 1950's *cough*, but I could be wrong.
Author: OtherHazards
Disclaimer: Neither the Marvel characters in this nor the titles, lyrics, artists, nor authors used are mine, but they sure are fun to borrow.
Rating: NC-17
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: Sexual situations, and some mission-related violence.
Pairing/Characters: Steve/Tony. Past Matt/Elektra and Matt/Elektra/Tony implied. (Co-starring Peter Parker, Danny Rand, Luke Cage, Warbird, Scarlet Witch, Thor, Quicksilver, Hawkeye, Misty Knight, and Elektra.)
Summary: Just as Steve and Tony are coming together, the rest of their world threatens to come apart...
=======================================================
The Iron Horse Garage, Greenwich Village NYC, 1971. 10:11 AM.
Tony felt the attack coming a half-second too late, and drove his left elbow back with his full strength behind it.
“Uh-!” It caught Steve fairly in the ribs, and he reacted equally fast, locking Tony’s left arm with his left hand, and catching Tony’s right wrist in his other one.
They both froze.
“...Steve?” Tony blinked.
“Ah- -yeah,” Steve managed, “-sorry about that.”
“You almost got ventilated with a Phillips screwdriver, you idiot!” Tony snapped, glaring over his shoulder. -A black-handled screwdriver and several long machine screws lay on a red cloth over the seat of the motorcycle in front of him.
“I won’t try that again,” Steve promised, loosening his hold.
“...What were you thinking? What were you -trying- to do?” Tony demanded, still shaken. Steve was probably wearing his scale-mail and leather costume under his street clothes, but still...
“This,” Steve said sheepishly, letting go entirely and putting his hands over Tony’s eyes.
Tony reached up and touched the backs of Steve’s hands with his own, then let out a breath.
“...Idiot,” Tony whispered again, and leaned back a little until his shoulders made contact with Steve’s chest.
Steve hugged him, and Tony shut his eyes.
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 4:40 PM.
There was a handwritten sign taped to the freezer door.
“Out of order,” Peter read aloud, amused. “-Didn’t this thing break on you last August too?”
“It’s old,” Tony shrugged, without looking up from his repulsor-gauntlet wiring.
“No, it’s -jinxed-,” Peter argued, “-every time you build a new suit of armor, the freezer goes out. It’s like rain and a freshly waxed car...”
“Uh-huh,” Tony replied vaguely, threading a tiny white wire through a metal eyelet.
“I mean seriously... what does you building a new suit of armor have to do with things freezing?” Peter added.
Tony looked up.
“Why don’t you tell me?” He suggested, carefully.
“Well obviously it’s not a normal freezer. I mean, you don’t keep equipment around that you don’t have a use for, and the only thing in that freezer is a half eaten tub of mint-chocolate-chip ice cream, a couple rolls of film, and a bucket of -batteries-...”
“...Why is the ice cream half-eaten?” Tony asked, suspiciously.
“I...” Peter began.
“Peter, you’re a chemist. Silver Nitrate is terrible for you, and so is Cadmium, Potassium Hydroxide-”
“Bit by radioactive spider, remember? And if it’s so unsafe, why do -you- keep it in there?” Peter countered.
“I feed it to people I don’t like,” Tony told him, dryly.
“No you don’t, that was a new container. I think you keep it in there to make it look like you don’t know what you’re doing, so people won’t ask you what the freezer’s really for.”
“Go on...” Tony smiled.
“I think it’s a furnace, or some kind of experimental microwave device,” Peter guessed.
“You have a very active imagination,” Tony smirked.
“Okay, then it’s something else...” Peter translated, undaunted. “...What would happen if I opened the door?”
“If you could GET it open past the dummy-locks I installed, I’d be taking you to the emergency room,” Tony admitted.
“What would my injuries be?” Peter asked.
“Shrapnel, among other things. If you got really lucky, you might get an upgrade out of it,” Tony joked, tapping the glowing front of his arc-reactor.
“Shrapnel,” Peter said, carefully.
“Yes.”
“You don’t -build- explosive weapons.” Peter noted.
“No,” Tony agreed.
“-But there’s something metal inside there that would explode if I opened this door,” Peter said, tapping the front of the freezer.
“Yes,” Tony nodded.
“...Kind of like a clay pot shattering in a kiln?” Peter guessed.
“Something like that, yeah.”
“-This really IS a freezer, isn’t it?” Peter realized.
“Of course it’s a freezer,” Tony smirked.
“Okay, what parts of your armor do you have to process cryogenically?” Peter asked.
Tony grinned, and said nothing.
“Would you like some ice cream?” Peter suggested, innocently.
“There’s some black cherry you can have in the upstairs freezer,” Tony told him, “-but you better leave some for me.”
“Roger that, boss,” Peter grinned, and disappeared upstairs.
-
Avengers Tower, NYC. 8:20 AM.
“Whose record is this?” The Scarlet Witch asked, stopping the turntable of the record player in the common room that had been left playing when the mission alarm sounded.
“Tis not mine, of that you may be certain,” Thor said, on his way in to the kitchen.
Quicksilver ran over to read the record’s label momentarily, sniffed dismissively, then vanished elsewhere without comment, satisfied that no-one had purloined one of his records.
“’Up on the Roof’, by The Drifters? Going once...?” Wanda called, holding the record up.
“Ooo, I like that song,” Warbird said, taking the record from her.
“-Just give it back to me when you’re done,” Cap smiled, coming in and pushing down his cowl one-handed.
“This is yours?” Warbird blinked, “-I thought you didn’t like anything made after...”
...the rest of us were born...
“Well- -I borrowed it from a friend, actually...” Steve said, trying to sound casual.
“Please, please tell me that someone was Nick Fury, because I could really use the blackmail material,” Warbird grinned, one eyebrow raised.
“Nope, sorry,” Steve replied, his smile fading a little.
“Too bad,” Warbird decided, setting the record back on the turntable and placing the needle back at the beginning.
“...Yes,” Steve agreed, glancing down at the back of one of his gloves.
’When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space
On the roof, it's peaceful as can be
And there the world below can't bother me
Let me tell you now-‘
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 11:03 PM.
Tony flopped onto the two-thirds of the cracked green leather couch that Steve wasn’t occupying, and used the blonde’s jean-covered thigh for a pillow.
Steve closed his book, set it aside, and looked down at Tony thoughtfully.
“...What?” Tony asked, looking up at him with a commendably straight face.
Steve sunk his fingers into the back of Tony’s dark hair and kissed him, lifting up slightly.
“Mm...” Tony’s eyes closed, and one hand curled around the back of Steve’s neck.
Steve broke the kiss after a long moment, then gave him another one just as good.
Tony’s mind helpfully donated some hints about what to do with flexibility like that...
When Steve drew back a second time, Tony’s face was lightly flushed, and hungry. Tony started to sit up, but he felt Steve’s fingers tighten in his hair, -just- enough.
Leverage. Angles. Totally unnoticeable, if he hadn’t tried to move...
Steve smiled enigmatically, and watched the centers of Tony’s blue-gray eyes darken.
Then he let go.
Tony’s eyes narrowed, and he moved. His knees sunk into the couch on either side of Steve’s hips, and he took the blonde’s strong-jawed face in both hands to kiss him from an up-angle.
Tony felt big hands close around the small of his lower back, and then the unique, bark-like texture of Steve’s mail shirt against his skin, through three layers of cotton.
There was something deeply sacrilegious about having his dick pressed squarely against where the star was, but Tony decided he could live with it if Steve could.
Especially since Steve seemed to wa-ohmygod...
Ass-grab. Good one. Fingers gentle and firm, kneading thoughtfully...
Tony pressed back down into the kiss he’d inadvertently broken, drawing Steve out, demanding -full- participation and making sure the other man had very little time to think. Just in case.
Steve’s hands were at the collar of his green coveralls now, one on each side, pulling Tony down, and forwards. -And then Steve was moving him back, and Tony blinked, looking down at him questioningly.
“Can I see it?” Steve asked quietly, holding the tab of Tony’s coverall zipper between finger and thumb.
“Yeah, go ahead...” Tony nodded, licking his lips.
Steve unzipped Tony’s coveralls to just above waist-level, and pushed them down off his shoulders. He lifted the edge of the shirt Tony wore underneath, and there was a brief tangle of clothing as both of them tried to pull it off at once. Tony won possession by leaning back momentarily, and tossed the shirt over his shoulder without looking at it.
Steve paused, hands cupped around Tony’s back just beneath his shoulder blades, fair skin painted in pale blue light and shadows. Steve’s blonde hair fell forward a little from Tony’s angle, and the light from the arc reactor made the very edge of it glow white, like exposed fiber-optic cable.
Steve looked up, and smiled.
Tony kissed him.
One of Steve’s hands closed over the warm disk of the arc, and his fingers brushed the slightly uneven skin around its base. Tony squirmed a little and caught his breath, breaking the kiss.
“Sensitive?” Steve asked.
“A- a little, but-”
“Want me to st-”
“NO,” Tony cut him off.
Steve’s breath ghosted across his chest just above the arc, and he brought his right hand into play, doing something to the curve of Tony’s lower back with the ball thumb that-
“Nng... Jesus...” Tony swore, and this time when his hips rocked forwards, he didn’t try to stop them.
Steve’s hands moved together across his back, not quite a tease, but mapping him somehow. Finding his landmarks, memorizing the terrain- -and incidentally, pressing them closer together. Tony’s right hand fisted in the back of Steve’s collar, cloth and cowl alike, and a small frown of concentration settled in between the dark, clean curves of his eyebrows.
-Eyebrows like that would need charcoal, Steve thought, automatically.
Thinking in terms of art had been his way of justifying his thoughts for quite some time, and even now he couldn’t shake it. Couldn’t fully admit that he wanted to not only look, but touch, and taste...
Part of his mind wasn’t ready. Part of his mind was still scared, and if he pulled Tony’s mind apart far enough with his hands, he could watch the other man lose it from a safe distance again, and not think about what it might be like to hold him naked.
To slide against him, and feel- -that-!
Steve gripped Tony’s hips in both hands, stilling them.
“...Hnnnh?” Tony demanded his breathing uneven.
“I- want to try something,” Steve swallowed, eyes still shut.
Tony’s eyes opened, looking down at the other man intently.
“What did- -you have in mind?” He asked, catching his breath.
“I want to...” Steve began, and though he managed a wild glance up at Tony’s face for a moment, the rest of that sentence wouldn’t come.
“-Get naked with me?” Tony prompted helpfully, one end of his mustache quirking up.
“No, I- -not yet. I want to, uh...” Steve blushed deeply. He was getting really, really angry with himself.
Steve’s emotion translated physically into a tightening of his hands and a partial groping of Tony’s ass. Tony braced his hands on Steve’s shoulders hard, and bit his lower lip for a moment.
“Steve, just- -whatever it is, do it- slow an- and I’ll tell you if I don’t like it, because if you can’t even say it it’s got to be good, and I- -yeah just... let’s do this,” Tony argued quickly, when he could talk again.
Steve nodded, visibly relieved, and took a breath. He pulled the zipper of Tony’s green coveralls the rest of the way down, let go of them so they fell to mid-thigh and palmed Tony’s dick through his boxers. Tony’s fingers tightened abruptly around Steve’s shoulders, and Steve glanced up with concern.
“-M’good,” Tony panted, “-p- -please continue...”
Steve palmed him again, and ran his free hand along Tony’s back, returning to familiar territory, then stroking down further. He ran his thumb across the head cautiously, and felt thin cotton, and firm, living tissue beneath it. This wasn’t the thickly-sewn zipper of pair of jeans, or the proverbial ‘something in his pocket’, this was -Tony-.
This was someone just as breakable as he was, just as excited as he was.
This was a man who wanted him. Very, very much.
Steve was hard too, uncomfortably hot and confined beneath layers of khaki and well-fitting blue leather. ...But seeing Tony like this, touching him and watching his eyes slip closed, lips parting-
It was okay.
It was fun, and if he was hard enough to feel his own pulse inside his costume, that was okay too. It was something... he could have. ...Something he could guide Tony’s fingers to, and probably watch the other man’s eyes darken in covetous glee.
If he could find his courage now, and-
Steve bent his head, and nuzzled Tony through his boxers. It was a careful movement, all barely-contacting warmth, and the scratch of his own pale five o’clock shadow against thin cotton, and a darkly complex scent that made him harder, and suddenly thirsty.
Steve swallowed, and lifted the waistband of Tony’s boxers down, careful not to snag him. That was never fun, and since he knew-
There.
Steve had rarely seen another man’s crotch at close range before, and never when he was allowed to stare openly. He could chicken out at this point, the way he had once turned down a very interesting offer from Pvt. Finn in Marseilles...
The scent was stronger now, like clean sweat, and the shadows in concrete-floored boxing-gym locker rooms, and maybe a faint hint of machine oil.
Steve glanced up, unwittingly breathing lightly across Tony’s skin.
Tony’s eyes caught Steve’s glance, and held it fast. Tony was fascinated. Horrified. Riveted. No longer altogether sane, but watching Steve’s explorations of his person as if he couldn’t quite believe what his eyes were seeing.
Steve’s doubts came back in a rush, and he swallowed, his throat going dry.
Tony reached down, and cupped the side of Steve’s face in his hand. The light of the arc reactor made him look more than human somehow, like an angel with a strangely misplaced halo. He brushed Steve’s lips with his thumb, and his face became calm. Steve’s lips parted, and he licked Tony’s fingerprint.
Tony’s eyes widened a little, and he caught his breath.
“You- -oh. I thought you’d want me to-” Tony broke off, and bit the inside of his lip.
“...Would you?” Steve asked, still watching his face.
“Yes,” Tony admitted, a slight exhalation of air that sounded as if it -felt- good to make.
“I- -need to-” Steve’s words fell apart again.
“-Okay,” Tony nodded quickly, now not sure exactly -what- Steve’s plan was, but having deduced that it involved one or both of them getting a blowjob.
Tony was right, and the staring wonder of the moment that he realized Steve was actually serious was something he would never forget. It wasn’t the slight touch of roughness of as the other man’s cheek brushed his stomach, or the soft touch of lips or tongue, it was Steve’s hair. That outdated forehead-curl that never seemed to stay combed to the side once he’d put his costume on over it. ...The faint touch of that swirl of hair, bright as summer wheat straw, against skin Tony hadn’t once thought Steve would want to see, let alone taste...
That was when it became real.
Tony’s stomach clenched a little, and he shivered. It felt good, just like-
-No.
Tony forced his eyes to stay open, forced himself to watch this, and accept the reality.
Ca- -no, Steve Rogers was blowing him.
And... ...not even very well, but the sight of this beautiful man making the attempt would have been worth it even if it -hadn’t- felt good... which it did.
Tony became aware of the fact that he’d leaned his ass back against Steve’s hands at some point, and that Steve was holding him from falling further backwards without apparent effort.
Which was extremely hot, but... ...damn, Steve was really bad at this, maybe he should- ...naah.
Tony slid a hand into Steve’s soft, long-banged hair, and flexed his fingers, smiling.
“-You okay?” Tony asked, hand on Steve’s shoulder.
Steve nodded, and coughed some more, sleeve held across his mouth self-consciously.
Tony tried desperately to keep a straight face, but his afterglow this time was of the giggly variety, which made that next to impossible. Recovering, Steve caught sight of Tony’s tremblingly amused expression and groaned, shutting his eyes.
“-That bad?”
“Ah... yeah,” Tony admitted, “-but you didn’t give up, and you looked great doing it,” he assured him.
Steve glanced up dubiously. Tony kissed him.
Tasting himself on Steve was strange but not unpleasant, a mixture like ...hamburgers and raspberry sauce. Both not bad individually, but he’d never really imagined tasting them together. Steve was-
Tony broke the kiss, and looked down at the blonde thoughtfully.
“-You’re braver than I thought,” he realized, aloud.
Steve smiled wryly.
Tony kissed him again, more softly this time. When the kiss ended, Steve ran a forefinger across the carefully trimmed line of Tony’s mustache. Tony wiggled it like Samantha on ‘Bewitched’, and grinned. Steve missed the cultural reference by a mile, but grinned back anyway.
Tony glanced down at the front of Steve’s pants, then back up.
“...I owe you one, don’t I?”
“I’d say you do,” Steve agreed. -He would have felt embarrassed to ask for this half an hour ago, but after Tony had all but laughed at him...
“No time like the present,” Tony suggested.
“No,” Steve smiled, “-there really isn’t.”
“-Scoot forward,” Tony instructed, taking a handful of his clothes and moving off the couch.
“Like this?” Steve asked.
“More... okay,” Tony held up a hand. He knelt on the bunched fabric of his coveralls just in front of the couch, and ran his hands up Steve’s thighs just because he could.
Steve naturally sat with his knees apart, and Tony had always considered that a promising sign.
Time to find out if he was right, but Steve was looking a little nervous again. Tony bit the inside of Steve’s right knee through his pants.
“Hey-!” Steve glared, surprised.
“Just seeing if you were still awake,” Tony shrugged, unapologetically.
“You’d better not try that elsewhere,” Steve muttered.
“Don’t worry, you’re in good hands,” Tony promised, undoing the first of Steve’s belts.
Steve, in Tony’s considered opinion, wore far too many layers of clothing. When attacked like a wrapped Christmas present however, those layers yielded.
Steve caught his breath as Tony released him, but shut his eyes and managed not to lose it.
“Hips up.”
“Hm?” Steve blinked.
“I have to-”
“-Oh, right. ...Wait, wouldn’t I be on the couch without-” Steve began.
“MY couch, I don’t care,” Tony assured him firmly, working Steve’s double layer of pants down where he wanted them and pushing him back down.
Steve’s thighs were thick, powerful in the way a racecar’s engine was, and long only because they were built in proportion to the rest. The lower edge of Steve’s shirt showed a tantalizing glimpse of -amazingly- good abs when he leaned back, and the scratchy-soft dusting of blonde hairs across his lightly flushed pale skin were barely half a shade darker than the forehead-curl that had so entranced Tony earlier.
“...You aren’t cut,” Tony noted, looking down at Steve’s dick appreciatively.
“I was-” Steve swallowed, “-it, ah- -it grew back.”
Tony took him reverently to hand, and examined the tip more closely.
“Because of the super soldier serum?” Tony guessed, fascinated.
“U-hmn-” Steve whimpered, nodding.
“Well, this should be interesting...” Tony smirked, and ran his tongue along the base of the head.
Steve’s right hand clenched into a fist at his side, containing the otherwise dangerous strength of his body. He shut his eyes, and fell into the sensation blind, trusting the other man to get him where he needed to go.
Tony played with whatever caught his interest, but he didn’t try anything too kinky. This was about mutual fun, not advanced technical skill that Steve would no doubt attempt to memorize on the fly...
...The fact that a martial artist as gifted as Steve was probably could learn things that way lent credence to Tony’s theory that Steve had probably never received a good blowjob before, though he clearly knew what one was supposed to look like.
Steve was a live wire under him, a study in barely-restrained power. He was improbably clean with a taste of well-kept leather, solid, gorgeous...
Tony pushed him, testing the blonde’s reactions, stealing glances upwards from time to time and watching each lick, each smoothly wet shift of his mouth unfold across Steve’s unguarded face.
It was over far too soon for both of them, in a choked exclamation that looked almost painful, and a short snap of Steve’s hips that Tony put a stop to by pinning them down with both hands, -hard-. Steve slumped back against the couch to catch his breath, and put a hand clumsily onto the back of Tony’s hair. Tony swallowed carefully, and eased off. He straightened up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand absently.
Steve’s blue eyes weren’t quite focused yet, but there was something in them that made Tony stop moving.
Steve raised Tony’s chin with two fingers, looked straight into him, and put a hand on his shoulder. Tony looked back at him silently, and had the strangest feeling that he was being ...knighted.
A sudden unorthodox mental picture of King Arthur and Sir Gawain occurred to him, and Tony actually blushed a little.
“Get up,” Steve ordered quietly, smiling down at him.
Tony stood.
Steve took his hand, and pulled him forwards, guiding Tony back across his lap.
Tony sank down against him skin to skin and sighed shakily, off-balance and feet still half-tangled in his loose coveralls. He was partly hard again and Steve wasn’t, but damn this position felt good...
Steve hugged him close, and kissed the side of Tony’s neck just below his ear.
...That felt pretty good too.
-
Central Park, NYC. 2:28 PM.
“I got the T-Rex,” Iron Man decided, looking up.
“Go,” Cap nodded, “-Spider-Man, you’re with me. Warbird, you’re our eyes in the sky, you and Quicksilver keep any meat-eaters from getting out into the city. Scarlet Witch, Thor, do something about that time portal, NOW!”
Warbird took off straight up. Tony and Quicksilver were already gone. Thor caught Scarlet Witch around the waist in one powerful arm, and threw his hammer deeper into the park.
The Velociraptors crept out from beneath the tree line on their left, and eyed the remaining red and blue humans with interest. They seemed to have no visible claws or fangs, and the smaller one didn’t seem to have jaws at all...
“Those things are picturing us on a sesame seed bun,” Peter observed, uneasily.
“-See if they’ve got a taste for web,” Cap said with a tight smile, and let fly with his shield.
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 8:31 AM.
“Hey Tony,” Peter said, waving a hand in front of Tony’s sunglasses.
“Mrbr... f’koff,” Tony responded from the couch, waving him away.
“Ah. Late night, huh?” Peter smirked, “-does this mean I can finish the frozen waffles upstairs?”
“Notta chance. There’s pancakes,” Tony pointed, without getting up.
“Don’t take this the wrong way boss, but were you still drunk when you made them? Because after that caper incident, I-” Peter began.
“UPSTAIRS, critic,” Tony growled, flipping him off in the general direction of the kitchen.
“Gee, tell me how you really feel...” Peter muttered, trudging upstairs anyway.
He came downstairs half an hour later, after a round of very passable banana-walnut pancakes. Tony was snoring gently, and he didn’t appear to have moved.
Peter considered his boss a moment, and decided to leave him alone. -Those pancakes had been pretty good.
He appropriated Tony’s (his) battered desk instead, and went over this week’s accounts.
One of the things that had surprised Peter when he’d first come to work here was how many sidelines Tony maintained in addition to the motorcycle repair shop. It was a good thing too, or Peter suspected the shop would have gone under long ago.
There was a ‘Heathcliff Metals’ that sent in checks of varying size and lists of ‘metals to look out for if your friend happens to acquire them’...
‘Century Cryogenics’, that paid occasional repair bills to someone named Mitch Germaine, who maintained a joint checking account with Tony but didn’t seem to exist aside from this...
Something about a computer system upstate with a P.O. Box that Peter had never been able to get the straight story on...
The list went on and on, and Peter still wasn’t sure Tony was showing him the whole thing. He’d met a lot of strange people tracking down the names on Tony’s list...
Peter was busy with the books for about an hour, and then he got... bored. He’d hoped he could talk to Tony about what was going on with Harry, but hung over his boss was very little good to man or beast. For one thing, the man smelled like a used bar-mat, and for another he-
Peter stopped.
That’s what was off.
He couldn’t smell much of anything, except maybe... pancakes.
Peter walked up the wall onto the ceiling, and let himself down on a slowly-spun web line right above Tony.
No. Tony hardly smelled like booze at all. ...Yet here he was, racked out on the couch pretending to be hung over. Curiouser and curiouser.
Very stealthily, Peter picked off Tony’s sunglasses.
Nothing. Asleep. Peaceful. Faint shadows under his eyes, but those were just the permanent ones.
Okay, plan ‘B’.
“Boo.”
Tony woke up with a start, and lashed out with his right hand straight up, palm upwards.
He missed Peter’s nose by a clean inch and a half, though if he’d been wearing a repulsor gauntlet, Peter would have been history.
Peter started back slightly, but maintained his balance upside-down.
Tony sank back down, shut his eyes, and sighed through gritted teeth.
“Good morning, Peter,” he said, in a voice that was dangerously calm.
“-You’re not hung over,” Peter stated, holding the sunglasses out of range pointedly.
Tony smiled then. It started slow and devious at either corner of his mustache, and spread into a look of such smug complacency that Peter actually retreated up his web line about half a foot.
“No,” Tony agreed, “-I’m not.”
“Can you never, ever smile up at me like that again, and we just, ah, forget this conversation ever happened?” Peter asked, hopefully.
“Not a chance,” Tony grinned.
“-Nuts,” Peter winced.
“Remember that talk we had about why I didn’t want to open the day after Matt and Elektra’s New Year’s party?” Tony began, mercilessly.
“Ohmygod don’t finish that thought,” Peter pleaded.
“What’s the matter? I thought you said Elektra was hot...” Tony teased.
“Yeah, but...”
“Yes, he’s a natural redhead. Get over it,” Tony said, flatly.
“You’re making my head hurt,” Peter accused, “-on purpose.”
“I’m trying to get you to stop screaming ‘eww, cooties!’ every time I bring gay stuff up, actually,” Tony admitted, relenting.
“Umm... why?” Peter wanted to know.
“It closes doors, Peter. The more unusual an occupation is, or the more rules of society you have to break to get into it in the first place, the better the chances are that you had to look at what you -really- wanted instead of just copying everyone else. And costumed heroes... you follow me?”
“Are you trying to hint that I’m outnumbered, here?” Peter asked, uneasily.
Tony glanced to the side momentarily, thinking.
“-No. But by freaking out like a little schoolgirl, you may be making people less likely to work with you without even realizing you’re doing it,” Tony explained.
“That doesn’t mean I have to like-” Peter began.
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Great. Something else to think deep thoughts about,” Peter said, dubiously.
“Think fast,” Tony advised, dryly. “-I’m dating Steve, you know.”
“Steve, Steve?” Peter asked.
“Yes,” Tony sat up, and rested his elbows on his knees.
“Well...” Peter considered, chin in hand, “-Steve’s not so bad.”
“-My thoughts exactly,” Tony smiled, stretching his arms up over his head.
-
Tony’s kitchen, 9:23 PM.
Steve let himself in through the skylight, and dropped lightly onto the worn linoleum floor next to the kitchen table.
The bedroom door was closed, so Steve knocked.
“Come in,” Tony called through it. -He’d already seen who his visitor was on the TV in the corner... though since there was no longer anything in front of the motion-detector cameras, it was back to playing channel eleven on mute.
Steve opened the door, and made out Tony stretched out on top of the blankets by the choppy, multicolored light of a cigarette commercial, and the unusually steady glow of the arc reactor. A round black cable about the thickness of a shading pencil lay against Tony’s chest in a loose curve and disappeared off the far side of the bed.
“Hey,” said Steve, unconsciously lowering his voice as if he was in a library.
“Mmm. S’good to see you...” Tony replied, “-put your hand on the bed frame, would ya?”
Steve set his shield down against the bedside table, pulled off his red leather gloves, and touched one of the brass curves of the headboard, grounding himself. He pushed back the cowl of his costume, and left his gloves on the bedside table. Tony’s eyes had half closed again, but he opened them when he felt the mattress dip, and smiled.
Steve leaned over and kissed him.
Tony ran his fingers lightly across the scales of Steve’s mail shirt. At this angle they hung loose, each tiny Duraluminum plate kept from actually pivoting straight downwards by the two scales contacting it from the row above.
“We did good out there today,” Steve said, when the kiss ended.
“Yeah, we did,” Tony agreed.
“Libraries are always special,” Steve reflected, sitting back on an elbow and stroking Tony’s shoulder idly with his fingers. “-They’re like hospitals and post offices-”
“They have flagpoles you can use for flashy aerial attacks?” Tony teased.
“Come on, you know what I mean... They’re different. Those buildings are for everyone, not just a single company or owner,” Steve explained.
“...My father had a library,” Tony said, his mind wandering.
“Oh? What kind of books?” Steve asked, carefully.
“Everything, it seemed like,” Tony smiled, “-my mom was into Victorian stuff though, so there was a lot of Bronte sisters and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle...”
“What else?” Steve asked, hand wandering onto Tony’s chest.
“Technical journals... some books on the history of the French revolution- -those were really dry... and this set of red-covered encyclopedias that went on forever... I saw my first set of breasts in one of those.”
Steve made a slight choking noise, and glanced down at the sheets.
“Oh don’t give me that, she was wearing a bra,” Tony laughed.
“What was a picture of a girl in her dainties doing between the pages of an encyclopedia?” Steve asked, not quite laughing.
“She was IN the encyclopedia, actually,” Tony smiled, “-‘A brassiere lifts a Polynesian into the twentieth century.’ ...Which I always thought was unfair, because I’m sure she would’ve looked great without it, and the color didn’t work with her tanned skin tone at all...” Tony rambled.
“Is this why you like the hula girl song?” Steve teased.
“Hm,” Tony considered, “-could be. C’mere, kiss.”
Steve kissed him.
Tony hooked a couple of fingers into the front collar of Steve’s costume as he did so, and gave Steve a dirty look when he tried to sit up.
“I know what you’re doing, you know.”
“It’s very important to practice resisting interrogations, Captain Stark,” Steve pointed out, virtuously.
“I’ll remember you said that, Private Rogers,” Tony promised.
Steve kissed him again. Tony let go of his collar.
“What are you reading now?” Steve asked, sitting back again.
“-Just so you know, I’ve been waiting to tell you about this...” Tony explained clearly, “-and it has nothing to do with your little ‘interrogation’ fantasy.”
“I didn’t say-”
“Bullshit,” Tony grinned, “-but just for the record, I’ve enjoyed being ‘interrogated’ too.”
Steve glanced over at the plugged-in arc reactor for a moment, then quickly at the back of his hand as it rested against Tony’s chest.
“So, what are you reading?” He asked.
“Universal Multiplicity and Parallelism in the Modern Age, six-eighty-eight edition,” Tony told him.
“That’s a mouthful.”
“Yeah, you should have seen SHIELD’s title before they made it into an acronym,” Tony snorted, “-but this is Reed Richards’s new book.”
“What’s it -really- about?” Steve asked.
“Mostly it’s Reed alternately bragging and geeking out about the fact that he can travel to alternate realities,” Tony began derisively, “-but it’s fascinating. Apparently Reed has dimension travel figured out in at least four different timelines, and get this- -this book wasn’t even written by the Reed Richards from THIS reality... he just edited a copy one of his alternate selves wrote so that it wouldn’t give away too much about the other realities it’s been published in. The Reed we know owns an original thirteen-twenty AND a six-sixteen edition, but damn him he won’t share. It’s okay though. I’ve caught a few things he missed while he was editing this one...”
-
Centralia, Pennsylvania, 10:27 AM.
“What IS this place...?” Peter breathed, staring out at the deserted town. A thin layer of smoke seemed to be everywhere, lingering and turning the horizon into a half-guessed object.
“It’s called Centralia. There’s a coal vein under the town that caught fire back in sixty two, and it’s still burning,” Iron Man explained in his rough, mechanical voice.
“Ah... excuse me?” Peter stared.
“-Put your mask on,” Iron Man ordered.
Peter fitted his rebreather into place, and pulled his cloth Spider-Man mask back down over it. Peter’s spider-sense was going crazy, but then, he already knew there was something wrong out there...
Iron Man opened a panel in the red armor covering his left forearm, flipped two toggle switches, and slapped it shut. The unibeam projector on his chest crackled for a moment, then subsided to a steady, dangerous glow.
They exited the chopper one by one, half the often-disavowed New York hero underground called out and mobilized in this, the East Coast’s darkest hour.
Spider Man, Misty Knight, Iron Man, Elektra, Power Man, Iron Fist, Hawkeye...
Tony frowned for a moment.
Something was obvious. Something big. Something he should have seen earlier...
!
Tony took two steps back, and closed an armored fist around the barrel of the helicopter’s fifty-cal door gun.
“Come on Iron Man,” the copilot yelled back at him, “-we’ve gotta go! The Lava Men were seen due west of-“
“The hell they were!” Iron Man cut him off, speaking both loudly enough to be heard over the idling rotors and directly onto the helicopter’s designated radio frequency.
“WHAT?” Hawkeye demanded.
“It’s a setup,” Iron Man yelled bluntly, “-everybody back on the bus! NOW!”
“You’re wrong, Iron Man! You’re abandoning-” the copilot began.
Nobody was listening, and half the people on the ground were already racing back for the chopper.
Iron Man heard the pilot telling the door-gunner to fire over his helmet radio, and knew that he’d been right.
He wrenched the fifty-cal’s gun barrel down like a licorice twist before the gunner had time to decide whether to act on the illegal order.
He stared the gunner in the face, and turned up all the indicator lights in his helmet for a moment, making the eye slits in his face-plate appear to flash white. The gunner put his hands up, and paled.
“Smart move,” Iron Man told him.
By now almost everyone was aboard, and Power Man and Elektra were up front keeping an eye on the now thoroughly cowed flight crew.
The empty town outside the helicopter was still unchanged, ominously peaceful like the moment before a dream turned into a nightmare.
Tony swung aboard last, and sat in the open doorway as the chopper lifted off, one boot braced on the helicopter skid outside.
Suddenly, his radar beeped a warning.
The pilots saw it too, and began screaming into their headsets about friendly fire, and standing down. The jets didn’t change course.
Now that they were all necessarily on the same team, the helicopter’s handling improved remarkably. They couldn’t outrace the two fighter jets that were bearing down on them, but Hawkeye made things unpleasant for the jets with flare arrows, and Iron Man fired a canister of chaff at them. Some of the shredded metal got sucked into the lead jet’s starboard engine, which instantly died in a stalled-out burst of thick black smoke, and forced him to abandon the chase.
The second one was still gaining, but-
There was a sudden flash in the smoggy reek behind them, then half a heartbeat later a deep, shattering boom, and a bone-jarring shockwave.
Centralia, Pennsylvania had become a gaping hole into hell.
The Helicopter was thrown forwards by the blast, and it pin-wheeled in midair for a few seconds before the pilots’ regained control. Hawkeye shut his eyes tight, gripped the overhead bar, and put his free hand over his mouth quickly.
Then it was over, and the silence was deafening over the steady beat of the rotors overhead.
Tony looked his shaken team over.
All brave, all good men and women with undeniable talents and powers, but none of them with the power to survive the blast of a fuel/air bomb and the long minutes without oxygen until the air cleared afterwards. ...If it ever -would- have cleared, in Centralia.
Every one of these heroes had had a run-in with the law, or had a reputation for ‘authority issues’. And of them all, only Iron Man could fly...
Casualties of the Centralia explosion.
Another sad statistic that whoever had paid for the gas in this helicopter could have told Cap and the rest of the ‘law-abiding’ heroes with a straight face...
And gotten away with it.
Tony felt cold, and sick. He gripped the edge of the open door hard enough to squeeze the shape of his armored fingers into the metal, and focused on the anger he felt building.
Somebody- -and he would find out who- -had tried to kill his team.
His eyes flicked to Peter.
His -family-.
“Hey boss-?” Peter said, hesitantly.
Tony blinked.
“Yeah, what is it?”
“Aren’t you going to do anything about him?” Peter pointed out the open doorway towards a tiny triangular shape caught in a flat spin. Both the jet’s engines were dead.
Tony was surprised he hadn’t spotted it earlier himself, but he also had to admit privately that he’d rather let the bastard fall.
...But saving one of the pilots who had tried to shoot them down would be an excellent way to start countering whatever cock-and-bull story the powers that be in Washington were doubtless cooking up for their unwelcome return. He couldn’t do anything less, really. ...Not in front of Peter.
“Good eye,” Iron Man said shortly, and leapt out of the open helicopter door, firing his boot-jets.
-tbc-
Note: The encyclopedia set with the entry about the Polynesian girl in the bra is real. I believe they were published in the wonderfully culturally sensitive 1950's *cough*, but I could be wrong.
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I'm really enjoying writing Peter, and I wish I knew more about his character so I could use him better.
The Peter in this reality is in some ways less mature than he is in canon, but then, he hasn't had to be an adult quite SO fast, nor so much on his own, so he's a little less tightly wound. He became Spider-Man at fifteen the way he usually does, and he IS a hero in his own right... but he's also been habitually teaming up with and/or coordinating with Iron Man since he was sixteen.
Having a Machiavellian but well-meaning boss(/single dad/weird bi uncle) can be a good thing sometimes.
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More like it will explode in your face if you handle it improperly.
In order to deep-freeze-temper metals, they have be frozen down to triple digits below zero.
...You open the door on a batch of armor plates cooled to -250F and let in 80F air, the sudden uneven thermal expansion can cause them to flex and shatter hard enough to -act- like an explosion.
And tehe Peter. ...He just found out it's was harder to reject people once they have faces.
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So far I can promise you Nick Fury as a talking character, but beyond that I have no idea.
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I'd write more of the street-level heroes, but I'm not giving them lines for precisely that reason. I don't actually -know- them that well.
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Also, I grew up in Northeast PA, so I kinda squealed when Centralia made an appearance (I guess in this universe the government evacuated the city long before our universe did?)
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I'm mostly basing him off movie-canon this time around, because I'm not as familiar with him in the comics.
As for Centralia... the government cheated. Or -was- cheated, take your pick. Centralia was occupied in this universe twelve hours -before- it was destroyed, but the final evacuation order was given because of the threat of the (probably fictional) lava men.