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cap_ironman2010-01-08 11:41 pm
otherhazards.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2010-01-08 11:41 pm
Entry tags:
Fic: Knights of the Breakfast Table (Chapter 2)
Title: Knights of the Breakfast Table, Chapter 2 (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: 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: Mission-related violence, alcohol abuse, and ...electricity.
Pairing/Characters: Steve/Tony. (Co-starring Peter Parker, Warbird, Scarlet Witch, Obadiah Stane, Dum-dum Dugan, and Nick Fury.)
Summary: Just as Steve and Tony are coming together, the rest of their world threatens to come apart...
========================================================
Times Square, NYC, 2:40 PM (same day as the Centralia bombing).
Most of the time, Steve walked like a normal man.
On a perfect sheet of slippery glare ice though, he still walked like a normal man, while everyone else was either skating or simply trying to remain upright. Steve walked past them like a ghost, like some strange and terrible apparition of vengeance, to whom the principles of shear, gravity, and hydrodynamics simply did not apply.
General Dunn’s national guardsmen saluted him, and he saluted them back. The few SHIELD agents did not salute, but they let him pass unchallenged, and seemed to draw themselves up a little as he walked by.
Colonel Fury was looking over the map on General Dunn’s folding table with disapprobation and a thick red grease pencil. Dum-dum Dugan was relaying orders to someone across the river over his radio.
“Colonel Fury?” Steve said, crisply.
“Whaddya got, Cap?” Fury asked around his cigar, without looking up.
“Did you have anything to do with Centralia?” Steve demanded.
Fury looked up, and met his eyes levelly.
“I sent the team in,” Fury acknowledged, “-but when I find out who was behind that bomb, I promise I’ll save ya a piece.”
“Yes. Or. No,” Steve asked again, coldly.
“NO, goddammit, I wouldn’t have BOTCHED the job! Now get your flag unwound and tell me what that magma dragon did ta to Wall Street!” Fury barked.
Steve watched the older man’s eyes seethe for a moment longer, then nodded once and replied.
“Massive structural damage, mostly on the first and second floor levels facing the street. I don’t know if they will hold long enough to be repaired, but they’ve all been evacuated... and Iron Man is there trying to stabilize them now.”
“...Iron Man, huh?” Fury said, sounding almost bemused, “-he the only one that volunteered ta come back?”
“No, Colonel, they all did. I re-distributed the members of Iron Man’s team where I felt they could do the most good for the rescue effort,” Steve explained.
Fury stared back at Steve across the table, and held his well-chewed cigar in the fingers of his right hand thoughtfully.
“So what you’re tellin’ me is... you mixed up his capes with mine, an’ planted ‘em on the most news-worthy bits of collateral you could find?”
“Yes sir,” Steve replied, flatly.
“You missed your callin’, Rogers,” Fury said grudgingly, biting his cigar again, “-but you do realize you just handed this country a PR nightmare, right?”
“You’ll have plenty of help tracking down the perpetrators, Colonel,” Steve promised, “-and once they’ve been brought to justice, I’m sure the papers will find something else to talk about.”
Fury glared at him for a moment longer.
“All right, get your butt up to the theater district. One of those top-balcony things caved in, and-”
Steve paused, one hand to the small wing by his right ear.
“Yes?... he’s right here... okay... are you sure?... yeah, I’ll ask him.”
“What now?” Fury demanded.
“That was Iron Man. He’s pretty sure he can stabilize the damage to the buildings on Wall Street, but he says he’ll need to break down the Manhattan Bridge for spare parts.”
“WHAT?!”
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 7:55 AM (next day).
Tony dropped his helmet onto the floor with a spinning crash and shoved the couch out of the way a little too hard, adding yet another rip to the green leather as it struck the corner of a bench-vice against the opposite wall. His fingers fumbled with the catch of his red breastplate, and he swore, putting one armored hand against the wall as his vision tunneled momentarily.
Pain came and went in clenching waves throughout his chest; he could almost -see- it spreading out from the unbalanced arc reactor like the hard green rings of sonar...
Tony took a breath, forcibly, and slid down the wall to his knees on the cool concrete floor. The rear edges of his leg-armor dug into the backs of his knees at this angle, but he could barely even feel it, reaching determinedly into a hinged matte-black plate on the back of the jukebox. His fingers felt heavy. Numb. He found the end of the power cord he needed more from memory than anything else, and half-turned so he could lean back against the wall.
Tony raised the plug, and held it at the entrance of the arc’s left power socket. He took two quick deep breaths; eyes wide open and focused on the garage door, and plugged in.
A sudden, white-hot spark that seemed to sting more than burn, and foreign power flowed into him in a steady, soothing pulse. He always thought of it as being cool somehow, like sherbert or a glass pitcher of ice water with thin rings of peeled, sliced cucumber.
Tony sat for long minutes, staring out at nothing. He flexed his hands slowly within his gauntlets, and listened to the notes of the metal, the familiar felt-but-unheard clicks, the low whirr of the barely-actuating servos that he knew inside-out... Tony’s eyes paused on the refrigerator once or twice, but they didn’t linger there. He didn’t need a drink that badly.
Minutes became half an hour, and Tony felt a little better.
He ran a hand back through the sweaty wreck of his hair, and sighed.
Please, please let this be enough.
Tony unplugged the power cable, and took a breath. Two. ...And then the first edge of pain began to return.
“S- shit...” Tony shuddered, more from fear than pain this time.
THIS, he would need a drink for.
Tony got up, forcing himself to walk steadily, and took a half-finished bottle of Jack from the second shelf. He unscrewed the black cap with his fingers, and took a long swallow.
Tony brought the bottle back over to the jukebox with him, his metallic boot steps steadier now.
He pressed ‘C-4-PLAY’ on the jukebox’s selector keypad, and waited.
‘Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to-’
Tony sat back down on the smooth concrete floor beside the jukebox, and leaned his head back against the dented wall, shutting his eyes for a moment.
‘Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you-’
He licked his lips, put the bottle down on the floor to his left, then reached back into the back of the jukebox for a black rectangular device about the size and shape of a lunchbox. It looked like a large multimeter, except that no multimeter he’d ever seen used test leads as thick as the red and black plugs that lay coiled on top of this one. There was a large red button on top of the device too, and Tony’s eyes flicked over it nervously as he unrolled the twin leads.
‘Though I know that evenin's empire has returned into sand,
Vanished from my hand,
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping-’
He set all the joints of his armor except for the ones controlling his right arm to ‘lock’ mode, and unplugged his armor’s main power connector from the right hand socket of the arc reactor. The internal power died with a whisper, and Tony was alone. He could hear his increasingly ragged breathing more clearly now, and his chest was really beginning to hurt...
‘My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet,
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming-’
Tony connected the thick red and black cables methodically, one on the left lower socket of the arc in his chest, and one on the right.
‘Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you-’
He hit the round red button on top of the black box with his palm- -it was designed to take such abuse- -and shut his eyes, swallowing.
‘-Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin' ship
My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip
My toes too numb to step, wait only for my b-’
Tony’s mind disappeared in a sheet of white flame as the high-voltage charge hit him, and he screamed.
‘-Spell my way,
I promise to go under it.
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me-’
Minutes...
Hours...?
...Seconds, Tony’s reluctantly returning thoughts assured him. He remembered to breathe with a sudden gasp and tasted blood from where he’d bitten his lip. He probed the damage with the tip of his tongue. It wasn’t deep.
Tony tore out the thick-wired red and black leads with a sob, and swore, rubbing his face with the metal fingers of the one hand he could move.
Time to fix that.
He plugged his armor’s power connecter back in, and unlocked the joints of his suit. Tony slumped against the wall, head down. The whole center of his chest felt tender, like a deep-tissue sunburn.
...It hadn’t felt this bad when Steve had shocked him back, Tony thought frowning.
He took off his red gauntlets one by one and let them fall, dead weight.
Tony took up the bottle of Jack with a hand that shook, and brought it to his lips.
‘-Though you might hear laughin', spinnin', swingin' madly across the sun,
It's not aimed at anyone, it's just escapin' on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin-'
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 10:20 AM (same day).
Steve left his bike, and pounded on the roll-down garage door with the side of his fist.
“TONY!”
There was a faint crash inside the garage, then-
“...Hangonna second.”
“Tony? Are you all right?” Steve called through the door.
“Oh. Yeah, I, uh... I’m fine...”
There was a rattling noise as Tony tried to unhook the locking chain.
Steve waited.
“Why didn’t you answer your radio when I called earlier?” Steve asked.
“That- -that was you?” The chain stopped rattling, “-jeez, I’m sorry... I- -guess I was in the can or summthin’...”
“Tony, please open this door.”
“Yeah, it seems ta be stuck. ...I’m gonna go get a- -torch,” Tony decided, his voice moving away.
“Never mind, I’ll come down through the skylight and help you fix it,” Steve promised.
“No, no, I’ve got this...” Tony assured him, rummaging noisily in the back.
Steve darted into the alleyway beside the garage, and up the fire escape of the building next door to the rooftops. Down in the garage, he found Tony looking thoughtfully at a stilled clock sitting on the same shelf as the striker for his propane torch.
“I’d forgotten I had this...” Tony said.
Steve’s eyes took in the office swivel-chair out in the middle of the oil-stained concrete floor, and the pieces of Tony’s red and gold armor scattered on the ground by the pulled-out jukebox. He smelled whiskey, and without looking, Steve knew that there would be nothing wrong with the garage door.
Then again... after a day like the one they’d had yesterday, any man might drink.
“Tony,” he said, putting a hand on the other man’s bare shoulder.
“...The guy who dropped it off never-” Tony blinked and broke off, turning, “-yeah?”
“You scared the hell out of me,” Steve said simply, and pulled him into a hug. “-When you didn’t answer your radio- ...I thought you were dead.”
“-M’sorry...” Tony took a few deep breaths against the collar of Steve’s long tan trench coat, and started to cry.
That pretty much compounded the list of things he hadn’t meant for Steve to walk in on, but it didn’t matter now anyway...
“I was there-” Tony gulped, “-and I thought you’d- -but then the army engineer- -guys, they dropped a beam, and I had to catch it, and I- -was already low on power, so I came back to- and I...” Tony trailed off uncomfortably, and swallowed, “...yeah.”
“I heard about that,” Steve said, rubbing the back of Tony’s neck with the gloved fingers of his right hand.
“Where-” Tony sniffed, looking up, “-where’s Spider?”
“I sent him home with Luke and Danny hours ago.”
Tony snorted abruptly, and dissolved into a helpless giggling fit.
“-What?” Steve asked, looking into his face with concern.
“Nothing, I- -I’m sure Peter’s safe,” Tony managed, then cracked up again and added, “-I jus’ hope he remembers some advice I gave ‘im...”
Steve looked dubious, but let it go.
“You’re cold,” he frowned instead, rubbing the muscles of Tony’s upper arm.
“-I don’ feel cold,” Tony noted, snuggling against the front of Steve’s coat.
“That’s because you’re drunk,” Steve told him dryly, “-but you’re standing in your underwear on a cold concrete floor, and its forty degrees out.”
“Steeve-?”
“Yes?”
“...Will you go to bed with me?” Tony asked, smiling a little and plucking at one of the large flat buttons on Steve’s coat.
“I think you should sober up first,” Steve decided, and gave him a frustratingly chaste kiss.
“I... thought you might say that,” Tony sighed, and dropped his forehead against Steve’s broad shoulder, eyes closed. “...Really would make me feel better, though...”
Steve stroked the back of Tony’s dark hair gently, and caught one of Tony’s hands fumbling with the belt-buckle of his trench coat as if of its
own accord.
Steve gave him a look, and disengaged the wandering fingers. Tony sighed again, and glanced down.
“Tony, as long as you’re feeling no pain- -I could really hurt you,” Steve reminded him, evasively.
“Hm-mm,” Tony shook his head, certain. “...Never hurts when you do it, Steve. You’re always- ...so careful with me. Feels like... Feels like flying,” Tony sighed, shutting his eyes and resting his chin on Steve’s shoulder “-feels... you feel so good...” his fingers flexed against the material of Steve’s lapel.
Steve cleared his throat a little, reddening.
“You should go clean up upstairs,” he said, letting go and taking Tony’s arm instead.
“Wait, wait, wait, armor...” Tony protested, pointing over towards the jukebox.
“I’ll come back down and get it as soon as you’re in bed,” Steve promised.
“No, tha’s not-” Tony began, trying to pull his arm free, “-leggo ‘a me... I have to do this.”
“All right,” Steve said, gauging the dogged look in Tony’s eyes.
Tony rubbed his arm absently when Steve let go, frowning. Steve tensed and glanced down when Tony’s fingers fell away from the spot, but there was nothing there to see. Steve relaxed uneasily.
Tony gathered the sections of his armor slowly together, then leaned an arm on the jukebox and pushed three buttons on the selector keypad.
Unlike some jukeboxes, this one would change records every time a new combination was pushed regardless of whether the old song was finished or not... -which was fortunate, because Tony played the beginnings of ‘What’s Going On’, ‘Immigrant Song’, ‘My Boy’, ‘Break on Through’-
“...Piece a’shit...” he muttered.
-‘Ruby Tuesday’, ‘Immigrant Song’, ‘Immigrant Song’ AGAIN...
Tony entered the rest of the code with his eyes shut, and finally got it right.
The front of the jukebox split apart obediently on its three hinges as ‘Immigrant Song’ continued to play, and Tony crammed all the pieces of his armor inside. All except for...
“Steve. -Have you seen my helmet? ‘S not here.”
Steve unfolded his arms and came over- -he’d been hanging back from what looked like a very private ritual- -to help Tony look. He didn’t find the helmet, but he did see something that looked disturbingly like a remote bomb detonator.
“What’s this for?” Steve asked quickly, pointing out the black, boxy device on the floor without touching it, “-I don’t remember seeing it here before.”
Tony looked up from his search beneath the couch cushions with annoyance, and froze for a moment, paling visibly.
“That’s a-” he licked his dry lips nervously, “-high-voltage circuit breaker test module. Box.”
“Where should I-“
“Just don’t fuck with it okay?!” Tony snapped, looking away.
Steve frowned at him sidelong, but stepped back from the sinister-looking device. He examined the way Tony’s armor was piled inside the jukebox. ...Then he smiled, and began taking it out again. The armor hadn’t fit quite right in the lower compartment because the helmet, which normally had the smaller top compartment to itself, had been crammed in at the back of the lower one.
...Where the actual records went in this jukebox, Steve hadn’t a clue.
He re-packed the lower half of the jukebox with quick efficiency, then stood up, helmet in hand.
“-Tony.”
“Oh-!” Tony saw his helmet, and the tension in his face melted into a grateful smile, “-you found it- -that’s terrific... thank you.” Tony took the helmet from him, “-seriously, Steven. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Tony,” Steve replied, with a tired smile.
-
Tony’s bedroom, 8:12 PM (same day).
Awakening in the dark, Tony felt warmth against the side of his cheek.
He explored it with his fingers. Arm... Elbow... fingers... And deep, quiet breathing from somewhere behind him, that could only be Steve.
Tony smiled faintly.
He stretched his neck experimentally, and winced. That didn’t feel right. Painfully sore like armor bruising, maybe something worse. But Steve had never-
A slight twinge in the muscles around the arc reactor in his chest brought Tony’s memory flooding back in a wave that left him momentarily nauseous.
He set his jaw, and breathed through his nose for a while, eyes tight shut.
The two impressions, the two sets of possibilities in his mind warred for a moment. Steve had come over, that was obvious. But he’d had to do one of those horrible re-starts, and then gotten drunk, how...
Steve had come over afterwards?
Oh, god.
Steve was bound to have found out what a mess he was sooner or later, but like -this-? And now, when Steve would feel honor-bound to stay at the garage with him anyway because of that Centralia thing?
-Fuck-.
Tony sighed, and ran a fingertip wistfully along a line of muscle in Steve’s forearm.
He lifted his face off of Steve’s arm carefully and sat, up, putting his feet on the floor. Hm. Still wearing his boxers from the day before. Never a good sign.
Tony rubbed his face with one hand, and frowned. His head was definitely in pain, but not the four-alarm god-awful migraine that re-setting and getting trashed usually gave him. Huh.
He looked back at the long, bulky silhouette in the bed behind him, and smiled wryly.
-
Tony made his way into the kitchen, finally found the light switch, and started some coffee brewing. ...Even the first fumes made him feel better. He turned to sit down at the kitchen table, and stopped, staring stupidly. Sitting in the center of the otherwise empty tabletop, there was a ring. Tony’s thoughts flicked uneasily to Reed Richards’s book about parallel universes for a moment... and then his reawakening mind recognized it.
It was his signet ring, the one he’d inherited from his father. Gold with a dark red stone, and the capitol letter ‘S’.
Tony smiled, and picked it up between finger and thumb. Still bright, after all these years. The yellow metal was covered with a coating of minute scratches, and the old-fashioned styling felt heavy and solid in his hand. Tony didn’t have a pocket at the moment, so he put it on his right ring finger.
How had the ring gotten onto the kitchen table in the first place, though?
Tony spotted a coffee cup in the sink, and sniffed it. Something with chicken. He didn’t remember drinking that, and obviously Steve had put the cup in there... had they been talking about the ring last night? Had he, on top of everything else he’d done, told Steve about his parents, and losing Stark Industries to his cousin Morgan, and Sunset Bain?
In German, ‘morgen’ meant ‘morning’. ‘Morning and Sunset’, so very cute. The ‘Bain’ of Tony’s existence... though that was her maiden name now.
Poor Zachary. The kid deserved better parents than those two, even if there had been a certain clannish satisfaction in watching Morgan do something right for a change, at Sunset Bain’s expense...
Had he told Steve the ‘Morgan/morning’ joke, Tony wondered, or had Steve have picked up on it on his own?
Probably the latter. Steve was smart as hell, and he spoke both German and French.
Tony poured his coffee, and the underside of the gold band on his finger clinked quietly against the ceramic mug’s handle.
Stark had been a good name to have when Tony’s father had given it to him, and wearing his signet ring again made it feel just a little bit cleaner.
-
Tony’s kitchen, 8:41 PM (same day).
Steve was standing in the open doorway.
How long he had been there, quietly observing Tony like a lion on the African veldt, Tony had no idea.
Nobody that big should be able to move that silently.
“Hey,” Tony said, raising his coffee cup a little and trying desperately to read the expression on the blonde’s face.
“Good morning,” Steve said, padding in and filling a coffee cup from the pot Tony had brewed earlier.
Tony traced the cut on his lip nervously with the tip of his tongue.
Steve sat down at the table across from him, steaming coffee cup almost hidden behind the circle of his fingers.
“So,” he said, picking up Tony’s right hand and looking at the ring, “-that is yours.”
“Yeah, it’s- -it was my father’s,” Tony explained.
“Good. I, uh... I found it when I was putting the couch cushions back,” Steve said, running a hand through his own sleep-spiked hair.
Both of them were happier to look down at the ring than make eye contact right now.
“...You cleaned up downstairs?” Tony blinked, looking up anyway.
“Everything except for the broken bottle by the foot of the stairs. That sir, you clean up yourself,” Steve told him.
“-Of course,” Tony’s gaze dropped again, and he withdrew his hand from Steve’s. “...Listen Steve, about this morning-”
“It’s been a rough day and a half,” Steve cut him off, reclaiming Tony’s hand, “-and I think I know what that high voltage box downstairs is for anyway.”
Tony caught his breath, but he couldn’t honestly say he was surprised that Steve had figured it out.
“What do you think?” Tony asked, finally.
“I think you need a spotter,” Steve told him frankly. “-I also think you should re-design that box of yours, because if I heard you right last night, it’s designed to blow out weak circuit breakers, not jump-start something as sophisticated as the arc.”
“You may have something there...” Tony admitted thoughtfully, not really having heard the part about using a spotter.
“-Later,” Steve smiled, standing, “-come back to bed and watch the news with me. We’re in it.”
“Have they caught the guys who tried to kill my team yet?” Tony asked.
“No, but Daredevil said to tell you Elektra and She-Hulk are running down a lead in Washington,” Steve replied, pausing near the doorway.
“That sounds promising...” Tony nodded.
“-Either way, the Avengers already voted to help out no matter what Colonel Fury says. Whoever was behind Centralia was counting on the confusion of the crisis in New York to cover it, and now that-”
“Wait, Fury did what?” Tony demanded, setting his coffee cup down and coming closer.
“He pulled rank on us,” Steve said, disgustedly, “-and I had to go along with it, at least publicly.”
“...Don’t you people have a charter from the city of New York?” Tony pointed out.
“Yes, but it assumes that the civil authorities will be working -with- us, and since SHIELD and the FBI have declared this a criminal
investigation, we’ve been officially told to butt out,” Steve explained.
“Nobody told ME to stay out of it,” Tony said, angrily.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Steve smiled, “-and since someone clearly threatened the lives of seven citizens of New York with a force the police couldn’t have handled, the Avengers will be protecting them until SHIELD and the FBI have completed their investigation.”
Tony grinned.
“...Are you telling me you’re my bodyguard now?”
“Yes,” Steve said, smugly.
“-They’re going to nail your ass to the wall for this, you know that right?” Tony warned him, suddenly serious.
“It’s time to define what the Avengers are, Tony. This isn’t about agency priority in a criminal investigation, this is about Fury being sore that I let the Centralia story break in the first place. If I start letting SHEILD decide what truths I can tell, what battles are worth fighting... then I have no business leading the Avengers at all.”
Tony caught his breath, and looked into Steve’s resolute face with newfound understanding. He closed the distance between them in two steps, pinned Steve firmly against the kitchen counter, and kissed him. Steve’s forgotten coffee splashed across his own fingers and Tony’s hip, and they broke apart abruptly.
Tony swore. Steve hissed softly through his teeth, and set the rest of his coffee -down-.
“You okay?” Tony asked.
“Yeah...” Steve nodded, wryly.
“...Sorry about that.”
“Nobody said being your bodyguard was going to be easy,” Steve smirked.
“Peter,” Tony snapped his fingers, “-who did you put him with?”
“The Scarlet Witch,” Steve replied.
“Who else, what are the teams?” Tony asked, looking for a dishtowel.
“Well, Elektra’s out of reach in Washington DC with She-Hulk, and Jennifer’s one of our reserve members anyway. Thor is with Luke and Danny, Quicksilver is teamed with Misty Knight, and I gave Hawkeye to Warbird.”
“They’ll kill each other,” Tony breathed.
“Exactly. Warbird needs to learn some flexibility, and Hawkeye could stand to be taken down a peg or twelve,” Steve said, reasonably.
Tony snorted, and wiped up the last of the spilled coffee.
-
Stane International weapons plant, NJ, 6:18 PM.
Marvin Stavros, aide to Senator Byrd, stepped back off the edge of the platform with an air of resolution, and dropped. He fell for two point one seconds, and was snagged by a flying web line. Spider-Man looked down at the startled beaurocrat from the underside of the platform, and waved.
“Hiya. Nice speech, but we’ll need you to say alllll that again, in front of a grand jury.”
Abruptly, the man’s head blew off.
“Yikes!” Spider man let the web line slip out of his fingers.
“Regrettably, Mr. Stavros will be unavailable,” a deeply amused mechanical voice said, from on top of a mountain of shipping containers, “-and so will you.”
Spider-Man leapt out of the way of the next shot as if by magic, and vanished behind a silo of granular sulfur.
The exo-suit facing them was massive, at least twelve feet tall with shoulder-mounted rotary guns, and far bulkier than Tony’s Iron Man armor. ...It had to be, without an arc reactor to power it.
“The Warmonger...” Iron Man breathed, “-Stane actually built the damn thing knowing that it would kill-”
“What’s the problem?” Cap asked, quickly.
“Atomic power,” Iron Man replied shortly, looking around and reading the symbols on the chemical silos around them, “-if we win, everybody here loses.”
“He’d break right out of the Lead Zeppelin, wouldn’t he?” Cap stated.
“Oh, yeah. That attack only worked on Radioactive Man because- -shit!” Iron Man dodged a mortar round, just in time.
“You’ve got to get him under water!” Fury shouted, from over near the freight elevator.
“Do I look like a freakin’ submarine?” Iron Man shouted back.
“Well you sure are yellow!” Fury snarled.
Scarlet Witch ignored her teammates, and hexed one of the Warmonger’s shoulder-guns into jamming.
“Nice work,” Spider-Man said, approvingly. He looked up at the way the silos towered into the twilit sky, and scampered up the back of one.
Stealthily, he began spinning a canopy of web over the entire battlefield, thin-stranded but strong.
“That thing’s bigger than you-” Cap began.
“Yes, I GOT that part,” Iron Man agreed testily, squeezing together a steel ladder into a ball that he could throw like a child making a snowball.
“Is he more magnetic than you?” Cap asked.
Iron Man paused, and hurled the ball towards the Warmonger armor with the full force of a hand-repulsor blast behind it. While the momentary distraction lasted, he scanned his enemy.
Iron Man’s eye-slits flickered pale orange.
“Good call, Cap,” he said, selecting a transistor-boosted electromagnet from the compartment on his belt. “-Spider!”
“Yeah boss?” Peter said, swinging over.
“Web this to the back of his head or something,” Iron Man ordered, pressing the small device into his hand.
“-On it!” Spider-Man promised, and swung back up into the maze of silos and scaffolding.
Warmonger fired a line of Phosphorus rounds after him, which Iron Man put a stop to by repulsor-blasting the other armor squarely in the face.
Warmonger blew away half the empty silo Iron Man was using for cover, and it began to tip over. Cap was thrown left towards where the Scarlet Witch was, but Iron Man and Fury were still on the same side of the platform, and had to dive for it to avoid the falling metal tower.
“Fury, can you get a missile launch authorized?” Iron Man demanded, picking himself up.
“Is the pope Catholic?” Fury shouted back. “-What are ya plannin’ on doing, hitting him with it?”
“Using it for magnetic flypaper and dumping him in the Atlantic.”
“-You’re not askin’ for a nuke, are ya?” Fury asked, dubiously.
“God, no. Plutonium would just catalyze the reaction when his suit reaches-” Iron Man began.
“WATCH OUT!” Fury yelled.
Iron Man fired his boot-jets without asking why, and narrowly missed being pile-driven through the side of the downed silo. Warmonger turned, took the two sides of the riven steel plating in his hands, and ripped them apart, striding back through.
-
Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, 6:30 PM (same day).
Tony woke up with his ears still ringing. He could feel currents of air buffeting him from the right-hand side alone, and the heady, silent rush of super-powered flight as someone carried him.
Opening his eyes, Tony found himself in the arms of a beautiful woman. The surface of her blonde hair flickered in the rush of wind the way the edge of a frayed flag does, and the fact that she wasn’t squinting at this speed made her seem far more than human.
“Well, that’s a welcome sight...” Tony grinned behind his faceplate.
“Welcome back, Iron Man,” Warbird smiled down at him.
“How long was I out?” Tony asked, perfectly happy with being carried Superman-style.
“Long enough for Cap to call me twice, and Colonel Fury to pull his disappearing act when the Feds showed up.”
“Hmm,” Tony responded, philosophically.
“Fury also radioed in to tell to tell you ‘kiss the little mechanic for me’. ...Any idea what he meant by that?” Warbird asked, archly.
Tony laughed.
“Fury suffers from the delusion that I’m going steady with the guy who repairs my armor,” Tony explained, casually.
“Any truth to that?” Warbird asked, raising an eyebrow.
“We have more of what you’d call an open relationship,” Tony smirked. “And... thanks for getting me off that missile, lady. When I couldn’t break out of the magnetic field from Warmonger’s suit, I... that was a bad moment.”
“What are friends for?” Warbird smiled, looking up at the faint line of lights becoming clearer on the horizon.
“Well... now that you mention it, can you call Cap?” Tony asked. “-I think the shockwave earlier knocked my helmet radio out, because all I can pick up is this god-awful talk show host...”
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 9:45 PM (same day).
Peter swung comfortably in a hammock-like nest of webbing over the desk in the garage, one red and blue foot dangling tiredly over the side. Like a loose strand of this lazily-spun web, a white phone cord looped down out of Peter’s nest to the phone jack on the wall below.
“-Yeah, it’s me-” Peter was saying.
Pause.
“No, no, no, I’m all right-”
Pause
“-Yeah, thanks for covering for me.”
Pause.
“-Well it’s... complicated.”
Pause.
“You saw what on the news?”
Pause.
“They finally caught the guy? Huh, whaddya know?”
Pause.
“-Tomorrow,” Peter yawned, “-I’m just going to crash here tonight.”
Pause.
“No, you don’t have to do that, Tony said it was cool if I-.”
Pause.
“Yeah, I did.”
Pause.
“...Yeah he is, why?”
Pause.
“Look man, Tony’s my boss, I’m trying not to think too hard about them-” Peter began.
Pause.
“Who, Wanda?”
Pause.
“Oh yeah, she said to thank you for the flowers...”
Pause.
“...Yeah, I think she’s Romanian or something.”
Pause.
“No, like I told you, we’re just friends. Her brother Pietro would atomize me,” Peter shuddered.
Pause.
“No, he’s-
Pause.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Peter smiled.
Pause.
“Goodnight, Harry.”
-
Tony’s bedroom, 9:46 PM (same day).
“Is Peter still on the phone?” Tony asked.
Steve hung his scale mail shirt over a hook on the back of the closet door and paused, head slightly to one side, listening.
“-Yes.”
“Hmff,” Tony folded an arm over his eyes, “-screw it, I can’t be bothered...”
“You’re just hungry,” Steve said, smiling at Tony sidelong and stepping out of his blue leather pants.
“I told you, I’m not recharging, it’s re-synchronizing the electrical-” Tony broke off, and gave Steve a dirty look from beneath his arm, “-oh come on, you’re smart enough to understand this stuff.”
Steve grinned and climbed into bed, touching a curve of the brass bed frame with his fingers as he did so. ‘Hungry’ or not, Tony had a kiss waiting for him.
“Plug this in for me, will ya?” Tony said, pressing the electrical connector for the arc reactor into Steve’s hand without looking at it.
Steve closed his fingers around the warm metal and plastic plug. He’d seen it before, and it had always reminded him of a telephone switchboard plug from his own time, or the connector for a pilot’s radio headset, long and silver-bright.
The temperature and weight of the metal was off, though... too heavy for stainless steel or silver, and it didn’t hold the heat of Tony’s hand the way it should have...
Steve wondered what it was made of, and made a mental note to ask later.
He reached down and ran his thumb across the arc’s left-hand socket, then plugged the connector in smoothly, without issuing any sort of warning or countdown.
Tony shivered for a moment, then his whole body relaxed and he breathed easier.
...For all the times Tony had caught Steve eyeing the arc reactor like it was kinky underwear of the very best kind, the blonde had still chosen to plug him in as if doing a serious medical procedure. Interesting.
“-Okay?” Steve asked with a slight smile, hand on Tony’s arm.
“Mmm,” Tony nodded sleepily, “-did it jus’ fine.”
Steve lay back, and gathered Tony’s head against his shoulder. Tony scooted in a little closer, and felt the power cord pull straight against his chest.
“...I need a longer cord,” Tony decided, frowning and moving back. “...This’s a twelve. Need to make a fifteen, maybe a twenty...”
“Twenty,” Steve whispered into his hair.
Tony looked up at him curiously.
“Any special reason for that, Rogers?”
“Well, it- -might come in handy,” Steve explained reasonably.
“Hmm...” One end of Tony’s mustache quirked upwards, “-yeah, I could make one of those.”
Steve moved closer so the current cord would reach, and Tony re-settled himself with a quiet sigh. Steve pressed a kiss to his temple, then lay back against Tony’s pillow and shut his eyes.
Tony drifted somewhere between sleep and waking, riding the steady hum of the power from the wall.
His mind wandered, and he saw other cities. He saw a canyon with sheer walls. A silver twin-engine fighter plane chasing clouds like a high-speed flechette round. Tall, silent monoliths of neon, wavering in the rain. A glowing subway map, and a hundred, a thousand fluxuations of weight and momentum sparking back along the tracks...
Tony came fully awake suddenly, eyes open.
He let out a breath, and reached up to unplug the power cord from his chest. It didn’t feel any different out than it had in, which meant the synch had finished long ago. Tony let the cord slip out of his fingers to the floor, and raised his head a little.
Steve was out cold beside him, lips slightly parted, the arm that wasn’t around Tony curled up above his head.
...Damn.
Tony could hardly blame him though, and with Peter sleeping over downstairs, maybe it was just as well...
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 4:55 PM.
Peter clipped the last of his drying photographs to the web-line he’d strung back and forth across the bathroom ceiling, and switched out the red light bulb for a regular one to examine them.
An oak tree in the park, with a bird just taking off from one of its branches.
A dog of uncertain breed, wearing a frayed camouflage bandanna, and sticking it’s wet black nose right up towards the camera.
The soaped window of a building that had been broken into, from the inside.
An elderly Chinese lady on a bus, her hair rolled up in a severe hairdo secured by a pair of long wooden chopsticks.
Harry Osborne in a rumpled button-down shirt, buried in physics class homework, looking up with an expression of humor and long-suffering patience.
A beautiful dark-blue car in the sun.
Several of Mary Jane Watson dressed as Shakespeare’s Juliet, and one candid shot of her sitting on the grass in front of the school with a sandwich poised in one hand, studying a small book that lay open in her lap.
A shot of Tony that was mostly shadows, dominated by the cold blue-orange flame of the welding torch in his hand.
Tony asleep on the couch in far better light, worn black boots crossed over one armrest, face hidden beneath a folded newspaper.
Iron Man breaking mach one, from unwisely close range- -he’d blurred that one.
A full-length shot of Captain America, standing with one foot on the corner of a red-brick building and looking capable.
Steve’s unmasked face, focusing as he painted something detailed onto the tank of a silver-gray motorcycle.
Aunt May’s flower bed, before the nights had turned to frost.
Luke Cage lifting up a broken slab of re-barred concrete, while one firefighter reached into the space underneath for a trapped child, and another in the foreground gave orders to someone out of the frame.
A shot of himself as Spider-Man, swinging off one of the steel supports that now formed a hard, complex latticework between the buildings of Wall Street. Two police cars and a dump-truck hauling rubble drove on the cleared street below him, and an American flag had been hung from one of the beams that ran across horizontally. ...Someone had even found the time to spray paint ‘I heart NY’ on a girder planted in the sidewalk to the dump-truck’s left.
A huge mob of dead lava-men in an intersection near the theater district, still coated and anonomized by the glistening coat of unnatural ice that had frozen them in mid-charge.
A full-length shot of Nick Fury, in the act of ordering him to put away the camera.
Dr. Strange from a slight down-angle, caught with one hand gripping the edge of his high-collared cloak, his serious expression and the frost caught in his dark hair making him seem far older.
Wanda Maximoff... just her profile and the edge of a fire escape railing in the background, as the late afternoon sun painted her in all the colors of warmth.
Two looters, encased in web along with the color TV they were in the act of stealing, suspended from a lamppost.
War Machine in flight, lifting a city bus.
A young NYPD cop, glaring uneasily at Hawkeye’s back as if unsure whether to pull him out of the assembled group of costumed heroes and arrest him or not.
Daredevil and Misty Knight looking exhausted, sitting on the wide, flat steps of a high-rise apartment building.
Warbird handing the Scarlet Witch a Styrofoam cup that steamed promisingly in what had been the early-morning chill, and Wanda looking up at her with a smile.
The Avengers in full sunlight on the steps of their headquarters a week later, with Steve and Thor standing in the middle.
Tony leaning one arm against the jukebox, and watching with interest as Steve picked out a song. It had been something by Johnny Cash that time, Peter remembered-
Peter’s Spider-sense tingled, just preceding a loud but familiar knock.
“Hey Peter! Are you done in there?” Tony called through the bathroom door.
“Y- yeah almost, but can leave I these up to dry until-” Peter began.
“Whatever, suit up!” Tony cut him off. “-We’ve got creeps in a hijacked coast guard cutter attacking a container ship near Ellis Island...”
“Where’s Steve? Is he meeting us there?”
“He’s already up on the roof,” Tony yelled back, over the first crashing chords of ‘Immigrant song’, “-less talking, more long johns...”
Peter rolled his eyes, and pulled on his mask.
---
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: 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: Mission-related violence, alcohol abuse, and ...electricity.
Pairing/Characters: Steve/Tony. (Co-starring Peter Parker, Warbird, Scarlet Witch, Obadiah Stane, Dum-dum Dugan, and Nick Fury.)
Summary: Just as Steve and Tony are coming together, the rest of their world threatens to come apart...
========================================================
Times Square, NYC, 2:40 PM (same day as the Centralia bombing).
Most of the time, Steve walked like a normal man.
On a perfect sheet of slippery glare ice though, he still walked like a normal man, while everyone else was either skating or simply trying to remain upright. Steve walked past them like a ghost, like some strange and terrible apparition of vengeance, to whom the principles of shear, gravity, and hydrodynamics simply did not apply.
General Dunn’s national guardsmen saluted him, and he saluted them back. The few SHIELD agents did not salute, but they let him pass unchallenged, and seemed to draw themselves up a little as he walked by.
Colonel Fury was looking over the map on General Dunn’s folding table with disapprobation and a thick red grease pencil. Dum-dum Dugan was relaying orders to someone across the river over his radio.
“Colonel Fury?” Steve said, crisply.
“Whaddya got, Cap?” Fury asked around his cigar, without looking up.
“Did you have anything to do with Centralia?” Steve demanded.
Fury looked up, and met his eyes levelly.
“I sent the team in,” Fury acknowledged, “-but when I find out who was behind that bomb, I promise I’ll save ya a piece.”
“Yes. Or. No,” Steve asked again, coldly.
“NO, goddammit, I wouldn’t have BOTCHED the job! Now get your flag unwound and tell me what that magma dragon did ta to Wall Street!” Fury barked.
Steve watched the older man’s eyes seethe for a moment longer, then nodded once and replied.
“Massive structural damage, mostly on the first and second floor levels facing the street. I don’t know if they will hold long enough to be repaired, but they’ve all been evacuated... and Iron Man is there trying to stabilize them now.”
“...Iron Man, huh?” Fury said, sounding almost bemused, “-he the only one that volunteered ta come back?”
“No, Colonel, they all did. I re-distributed the members of Iron Man’s team where I felt they could do the most good for the rescue effort,” Steve explained.
Fury stared back at Steve across the table, and held his well-chewed cigar in the fingers of his right hand thoughtfully.
“So what you’re tellin’ me is... you mixed up his capes with mine, an’ planted ‘em on the most news-worthy bits of collateral you could find?”
“Yes sir,” Steve replied, flatly.
“You missed your callin’, Rogers,” Fury said grudgingly, biting his cigar again, “-but you do realize you just handed this country a PR nightmare, right?”
“You’ll have plenty of help tracking down the perpetrators, Colonel,” Steve promised, “-and once they’ve been brought to justice, I’m sure the papers will find something else to talk about.”
Fury glared at him for a moment longer.
“All right, get your butt up to the theater district. One of those top-balcony things caved in, and-”
Steve paused, one hand to the small wing by his right ear.
“Yes?... he’s right here... okay... are you sure?... yeah, I’ll ask him.”
“What now?” Fury demanded.
“That was Iron Man. He’s pretty sure he can stabilize the damage to the buildings on Wall Street, but he says he’ll need to break down the Manhattan Bridge for spare parts.”
“WHAT?!”
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 7:55 AM (next day).
Tony dropped his helmet onto the floor with a spinning crash and shoved the couch out of the way a little too hard, adding yet another rip to the green leather as it struck the corner of a bench-vice against the opposite wall. His fingers fumbled with the catch of his red breastplate, and he swore, putting one armored hand against the wall as his vision tunneled momentarily.
Pain came and went in clenching waves throughout his chest; he could almost -see- it spreading out from the unbalanced arc reactor like the hard green rings of sonar...
Tony took a breath, forcibly, and slid down the wall to his knees on the cool concrete floor. The rear edges of his leg-armor dug into the backs of his knees at this angle, but he could barely even feel it, reaching determinedly into a hinged matte-black plate on the back of the jukebox. His fingers felt heavy. Numb. He found the end of the power cord he needed more from memory than anything else, and half-turned so he could lean back against the wall.
Tony raised the plug, and held it at the entrance of the arc’s left power socket. He took two quick deep breaths; eyes wide open and focused on the garage door, and plugged in.
A sudden, white-hot spark that seemed to sting more than burn, and foreign power flowed into him in a steady, soothing pulse. He always thought of it as being cool somehow, like sherbert or a glass pitcher of ice water with thin rings of peeled, sliced cucumber.
Tony sat for long minutes, staring out at nothing. He flexed his hands slowly within his gauntlets, and listened to the notes of the metal, the familiar felt-but-unheard clicks, the low whirr of the barely-actuating servos that he knew inside-out... Tony’s eyes paused on the refrigerator once or twice, but they didn’t linger there. He didn’t need a drink that badly.
Minutes became half an hour, and Tony felt a little better.
He ran a hand back through the sweaty wreck of his hair, and sighed.
Please, please let this be enough.
Tony unplugged the power cable, and took a breath. Two. ...And then the first edge of pain began to return.
“S- shit...” Tony shuddered, more from fear than pain this time.
THIS, he would need a drink for.
Tony got up, forcing himself to walk steadily, and took a half-finished bottle of Jack from the second shelf. He unscrewed the black cap with his fingers, and took a long swallow.
Tony brought the bottle back over to the jukebox with him, his metallic boot steps steadier now.
He pressed ‘C-4-PLAY’ on the jukebox’s selector keypad, and waited.
‘Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to-’
Tony sat back down on the smooth concrete floor beside the jukebox, and leaned his head back against the dented wall, shutting his eyes for a moment.
‘Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you-’
He licked his lips, put the bottle down on the floor to his left, then reached back into the back of the jukebox for a black rectangular device about the size and shape of a lunchbox. It looked like a large multimeter, except that no multimeter he’d ever seen used test leads as thick as the red and black plugs that lay coiled on top of this one. There was a large red button on top of the device too, and Tony’s eyes flicked over it nervously as he unrolled the twin leads.
‘Though I know that evenin's empire has returned into sand,
Vanished from my hand,
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping-’
He set all the joints of his armor except for the ones controlling his right arm to ‘lock’ mode, and unplugged his armor’s main power connector from the right hand socket of the arc reactor. The internal power died with a whisper, and Tony was alone. He could hear his increasingly ragged breathing more clearly now, and his chest was really beginning to hurt...
‘My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet,
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming-’
Tony connected the thick red and black cables methodically, one on the left lower socket of the arc in his chest, and one on the right.
‘Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you-’
He hit the round red button on top of the black box with his palm- -it was designed to take such abuse- -and shut his eyes, swallowing.
‘-Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin' ship
My senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip
My toes too numb to step, wait only for my b-’
Tony’s mind disappeared in a sheet of white flame as the high-voltage charge hit him, and he screamed.
‘-Spell my way,
I promise to go under it.
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me-’
Minutes...
Hours...?
...Seconds, Tony’s reluctantly returning thoughts assured him. He remembered to breathe with a sudden gasp and tasted blood from where he’d bitten his lip. He probed the damage with the tip of his tongue. It wasn’t deep.
Tony tore out the thick-wired red and black leads with a sob, and swore, rubbing his face with the metal fingers of the one hand he could move.
Time to fix that.
He plugged his armor’s power connecter back in, and unlocked the joints of his suit. Tony slumped against the wall, head down. The whole center of his chest felt tender, like a deep-tissue sunburn.
...It hadn’t felt this bad when Steve had shocked him back, Tony thought frowning.
He took off his red gauntlets one by one and let them fall, dead weight.
Tony took up the bottle of Jack with a hand that shook, and brought it to his lips.
‘-Though you might hear laughin', spinnin', swingin' madly across the sun,
It's not aimed at anyone, it's just escapin' on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin-'
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 10:20 AM (same day).
Steve left his bike, and pounded on the roll-down garage door with the side of his fist.
“TONY!”
There was a faint crash inside the garage, then-
“...Hangonna second.”
“Tony? Are you all right?” Steve called through the door.
“Oh. Yeah, I, uh... I’m fine...”
There was a rattling noise as Tony tried to unhook the locking chain.
Steve waited.
“Why didn’t you answer your radio when I called earlier?” Steve asked.
“That- -that was you?” The chain stopped rattling, “-jeez, I’m sorry... I- -guess I was in the can or summthin’...”
“Tony, please open this door.”
“Yeah, it seems ta be stuck. ...I’m gonna go get a- -torch,” Tony decided, his voice moving away.
“Never mind, I’ll come down through the skylight and help you fix it,” Steve promised.
“No, no, I’ve got this...” Tony assured him, rummaging noisily in the back.
Steve darted into the alleyway beside the garage, and up the fire escape of the building next door to the rooftops. Down in the garage, he found Tony looking thoughtfully at a stilled clock sitting on the same shelf as the striker for his propane torch.
“I’d forgotten I had this...” Tony said.
Steve’s eyes took in the office swivel-chair out in the middle of the oil-stained concrete floor, and the pieces of Tony’s red and gold armor scattered on the ground by the pulled-out jukebox. He smelled whiskey, and without looking, Steve knew that there would be nothing wrong with the garage door.
Then again... after a day like the one they’d had yesterday, any man might drink.
“Tony,” he said, putting a hand on the other man’s bare shoulder.
“...The guy who dropped it off never-” Tony blinked and broke off, turning, “-yeah?”
“You scared the hell out of me,” Steve said simply, and pulled him into a hug. “-When you didn’t answer your radio- ...I thought you were dead.”
“-M’sorry...” Tony took a few deep breaths against the collar of Steve’s long tan trench coat, and started to cry.
That pretty much compounded the list of things he hadn’t meant for Steve to walk in on, but it didn’t matter now anyway...
“I was there-” Tony gulped, “-and I thought you’d- -but then the army engineer- -guys, they dropped a beam, and I had to catch it, and I- -was already low on power, so I came back to- and I...” Tony trailed off uncomfortably, and swallowed, “...yeah.”
“I heard about that,” Steve said, rubbing the back of Tony’s neck with the gloved fingers of his right hand.
“Where-” Tony sniffed, looking up, “-where’s Spider?”
“I sent him home with Luke and Danny hours ago.”
Tony snorted abruptly, and dissolved into a helpless giggling fit.
“-What?” Steve asked, looking into his face with concern.
“Nothing, I- -I’m sure Peter’s safe,” Tony managed, then cracked up again and added, “-I jus’ hope he remembers some advice I gave ‘im...”
Steve looked dubious, but let it go.
“You’re cold,” he frowned instead, rubbing the muscles of Tony’s upper arm.
“-I don’ feel cold,” Tony noted, snuggling against the front of Steve’s coat.
“That’s because you’re drunk,” Steve told him dryly, “-but you’re standing in your underwear on a cold concrete floor, and its forty degrees out.”
“Steeve-?”
“Yes?”
“...Will you go to bed with me?” Tony asked, smiling a little and plucking at one of the large flat buttons on Steve’s coat.
“I think you should sober up first,” Steve decided, and gave him a frustratingly chaste kiss.
“I... thought you might say that,” Tony sighed, and dropped his forehead against Steve’s broad shoulder, eyes closed. “...Really would make me feel better, though...”
Steve stroked the back of Tony’s dark hair gently, and caught one of Tony’s hands fumbling with the belt-buckle of his trench coat as if of its
own accord.
Steve gave him a look, and disengaged the wandering fingers. Tony sighed again, and glanced down.
“Tony, as long as you’re feeling no pain- -I could really hurt you,” Steve reminded him, evasively.
“Hm-mm,” Tony shook his head, certain. “...Never hurts when you do it, Steve. You’re always- ...so careful with me. Feels like... Feels like flying,” Tony sighed, shutting his eyes and resting his chin on Steve’s shoulder “-feels... you feel so good...” his fingers flexed against the material of Steve’s lapel.
Steve cleared his throat a little, reddening.
“You should go clean up upstairs,” he said, letting go and taking Tony’s arm instead.
“Wait, wait, wait, armor...” Tony protested, pointing over towards the jukebox.
“I’ll come back down and get it as soon as you’re in bed,” Steve promised.
“No, tha’s not-” Tony began, trying to pull his arm free, “-leggo ‘a me... I have to do this.”
“All right,” Steve said, gauging the dogged look in Tony’s eyes.
Tony rubbed his arm absently when Steve let go, frowning. Steve tensed and glanced down when Tony’s fingers fell away from the spot, but there was nothing there to see. Steve relaxed uneasily.
Tony gathered the sections of his armor slowly together, then leaned an arm on the jukebox and pushed three buttons on the selector keypad.
Unlike some jukeboxes, this one would change records every time a new combination was pushed regardless of whether the old song was finished or not... -which was fortunate, because Tony played the beginnings of ‘What’s Going On’, ‘Immigrant Song’, ‘My Boy’, ‘Break on Through’-
“...Piece a’shit...” he muttered.
-‘Ruby Tuesday’, ‘Immigrant Song’, ‘Immigrant Song’ AGAIN...
Tony entered the rest of the code with his eyes shut, and finally got it right.
The front of the jukebox split apart obediently on its three hinges as ‘Immigrant Song’ continued to play, and Tony crammed all the pieces of his armor inside. All except for...
“Steve. -Have you seen my helmet? ‘S not here.”
Steve unfolded his arms and came over- -he’d been hanging back from what looked like a very private ritual- -to help Tony look. He didn’t find the helmet, but he did see something that looked disturbingly like a remote bomb detonator.
“What’s this for?” Steve asked quickly, pointing out the black, boxy device on the floor without touching it, “-I don’t remember seeing it here before.”
Tony looked up from his search beneath the couch cushions with annoyance, and froze for a moment, paling visibly.
“That’s a-” he licked his dry lips nervously, “-high-voltage circuit breaker test module. Box.”
“Where should I-“
“Just don’t fuck with it okay?!” Tony snapped, looking away.
Steve frowned at him sidelong, but stepped back from the sinister-looking device. He examined the way Tony’s armor was piled inside the jukebox. ...Then he smiled, and began taking it out again. The armor hadn’t fit quite right in the lower compartment because the helmet, which normally had the smaller top compartment to itself, had been crammed in at the back of the lower one.
...Where the actual records went in this jukebox, Steve hadn’t a clue.
He re-packed the lower half of the jukebox with quick efficiency, then stood up, helmet in hand.
“-Tony.”
“Oh-!” Tony saw his helmet, and the tension in his face melted into a grateful smile, “-you found it- -that’s terrific... thank you.” Tony took the helmet from him, “-seriously, Steven. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Tony,” Steve replied, with a tired smile.
-
Tony’s bedroom, 8:12 PM (same day).
Awakening in the dark, Tony felt warmth against the side of his cheek.
He explored it with his fingers. Arm... Elbow... fingers... And deep, quiet breathing from somewhere behind him, that could only be Steve.
Tony smiled faintly.
He stretched his neck experimentally, and winced. That didn’t feel right. Painfully sore like armor bruising, maybe something worse. But Steve had never-
A slight twinge in the muscles around the arc reactor in his chest brought Tony’s memory flooding back in a wave that left him momentarily nauseous.
He set his jaw, and breathed through his nose for a while, eyes tight shut.
The two impressions, the two sets of possibilities in his mind warred for a moment. Steve had come over, that was obvious. But he’d had to do one of those horrible re-starts, and then gotten drunk, how...
Steve had come over afterwards?
Oh, god.
Steve was bound to have found out what a mess he was sooner or later, but like -this-? And now, when Steve would feel honor-bound to stay at the garage with him anyway because of that Centralia thing?
-Fuck-.
Tony sighed, and ran a fingertip wistfully along a line of muscle in Steve’s forearm.
He lifted his face off of Steve’s arm carefully and sat, up, putting his feet on the floor. Hm. Still wearing his boxers from the day before. Never a good sign.
Tony rubbed his face with one hand, and frowned. His head was definitely in pain, but not the four-alarm god-awful migraine that re-setting and getting trashed usually gave him. Huh.
He looked back at the long, bulky silhouette in the bed behind him, and smiled wryly.
-
Tony made his way into the kitchen, finally found the light switch, and started some coffee brewing. ...Even the first fumes made him feel better. He turned to sit down at the kitchen table, and stopped, staring stupidly. Sitting in the center of the otherwise empty tabletop, there was a ring. Tony’s thoughts flicked uneasily to Reed Richards’s book about parallel universes for a moment... and then his reawakening mind recognized it.
It was his signet ring, the one he’d inherited from his father. Gold with a dark red stone, and the capitol letter ‘S’.
Tony smiled, and picked it up between finger and thumb. Still bright, after all these years. The yellow metal was covered with a coating of minute scratches, and the old-fashioned styling felt heavy and solid in his hand. Tony didn’t have a pocket at the moment, so he put it on his right ring finger.
How had the ring gotten onto the kitchen table in the first place, though?
Tony spotted a coffee cup in the sink, and sniffed it. Something with chicken. He didn’t remember drinking that, and obviously Steve had put the cup in there... had they been talking about the ring last night? Had he, on top of everything else he’d done, told Steve about his parents, and losing Stark Industries to his cousin Morgan, and Sunset Bain?
In German, ‘morgen’ meant ‘morning’. ‘Morning and Sunset’, so very cute. The ‘Bain’ of Tony’s existence... though that was her maiden name now.
Poor Zachary. The kid deserved better parents than those two, even if there had been a certain clannish satisfaction in watching Morgan do something right for a change, at Sunset Bain’s expense...
Had he told Steve the ‘Morgan/morning’ joke, Tony wondered, or had Steve have picked up on it on his own?
Probably the latter. Steve was smart as hell, and he spoke both German and French.
Tony poured his coffee, and the underside of the gold band on his finger clinked quietly against the ceramic mug’s handle.
Stark had been a good name to have when Tony’s father had given it to him, and wearing his signet ring again made it feel just a little bit cleaner.
-
Tony’s kitchen, 8:41 PM (same day).
Steve was standing in the open doorway.
How long he had been there, quietly observing Tony like a lion on the African veldt, Tony had no idea.
Nobody that big should be able to move that silently.
“Hey,” Tony said, raising his coffee cup a little and trying desperately to read the expression on the blonde’s face.
“Good morning,” Steve said, padding in and filling a coffee cup from the pot Tony had brewed earlier.
Tony traced the cut on his lip nervously with the tip of his tongue.
Steve sat down at the table across from him, steaming coffee cup almost hidden behind the circle of his fingers.
“So,” he said, picking up Tony’s right hand and looking at the ring, “-that is yours.”
“Yeah, it’s- -it was my father’s,” Tony explained.
“Good. I, uh... I found it when I was putting the couch cushions back,” Steve said, running a hand through his own sleep-spiked hair.
Both of them were happier to look down at the ring than make eye contact right now.
“...You cleaned up downstairs?” Tony blinked, looking up anyway.
“Everything except for the broken bottle by the foot of the stairs. That sir, you clean up yourself,” Steve told him.
“-Of course,” Tony’s gaze dropped again, and he withdrew his hand from Steve’s. “...Listen Steve, about this morning-”
“It’s been a rough day and a half,” Steve cut him off, reclaiming Tony’s hand, “-and I think I know what that high voltage box downstairs is for anyway.”
Tony caught his breath, but he couldn’t honestly say he was surprised that Steve had figured it out.
“What do you think?” Tony asked, finally.
“I think you need a spotter,” Steve told him frankly. “-I also think you should re-design that box of yours, because if I heard you right last night, it’s designed to blow out weak circuit breakers, not jump-start something as sophisticated as the arc.”
“You may have something there...” Tony admitted thoughtfully, not really having heard the part about using a spotter.
“-Later,” Steve smiled, standing, “-come back to bed and watch the news with me. We’re in it.”
“Have they caught the guys who tried to kill my team yet?” Tony asked.
“No, but Daredevil said to tell you Elektra and She-Hulk are running down a lead in Washington,” Steve replied, pausing near the doorway.
“That sounds promising...” Tony nodded.
“-Either way, the Avengers already voted to help out no matter what Colonel Fury says. Whoever was behind Centralia was counting on the confusion of the crisis in New York to cover it, and now that-”
“Wait, Fury did what?” Tony demanded, setting his coffee cup down and coming closer.
“He pulled rank on us,” Steve said, disgustedly, “-and I had to go along with it, at least publicly.”
“...Don’t you people have a charter from the city of New York?” Tony pointed out.
“Yes, but it assumes that the civil authorities will be working -with- us, and since SHIELD and the FBI have declared this a criminal
investigation, we’ve been officially told to butt out,” Steve explained.
“Nobody told ME to stay out of it,” Tony said, angrily.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Steve smiled, “-and since someone clearly threatened the lives of seven citizens of New York with a force the police couldn’t have handled, the Avengers will be protecting them until SHIELD and the FBI have completed their investigation.”
Tony grinned.
“...Are you telling me you’re my bodyguard now?”
“Yes,” Steve said, smugly.
“-They’re going to nail your ass to the wall for this, you know that right?” Tony warned him, suddenly serious.
“It’s time to define what the Avengers are, Tony. This isn’t about agency priority in a criminal investigation, this is about Fury being sore that I let the Centralia story break in the first place. If I start letting SHEILD decide what truths I can tell, what battles are worth fighting... then I have no business leading the Avengers at all.”
Tony caught his breath, and looked into Steve’s resolute face with newfound understanding. He closed the distance between them in two steps, pinned Steve firmly against the kitchen counter, and kissed him. Steve’s forgotten coffee splashed across his own fingers and Tony’s hip, and they broke apart abruptly.
Tony swore. Steve hissed softly through his teeth, and set the rest of his coffee -down-.
“You okay?” Tony asked.
“Yeah...” Steve nodded, wryly.
“...Sorry about that.”
“Nobody said being your bodyguard was going to be easy,” Steve smirked.
“Peter,” Tony snapped his fingers, “-who did you put him with?”
“The Scarlet Witch,” Steve replied.
“Who else, what are the teams?” Tony asked, looking for a dishtowel.
“Well, Elektra’s out of reach in Washington DC with She-Hulk, and Jennifer’s one of our reserve members anyway. Thor is with Luke and Danny, Quicksilver is teamed with Misty Knight, and I gave Hawkeye to Warbird.”
“They’ll kill each other,” Tony breathed.
“Exactly. Warbird needs to learn some flexibility, and Hawkeye could stand to be taken down a peg or twelve,” Steve said, reasonably.
Tony snorted, and wiped up the last of the spilled coffee.
-
Stane International weapons plant, NJ, 6:18 PM.
Marvin Stavros, aide to Senator Byrd, stepped back off the edge of the platform with an air of resolution, and dropped. He fell for two point one seconds, and was snagged by a flying web line. Spider-Man looked down at the startled beaurocrat from the underside of the platform, and waved.
“Hiya. Nice speech, but we’ll need you to say alllll that again, in front of a grand jury.”
Abruptly, the man’s head blew off.
“Yikes!” Spider man let the web line slip out of his fingers.
“Regrettably, Mr. Stavros will be unavailable,” a deeply amused mechanical voice said, from on top of a mountain of shipping containers, “-and so will you.”
Spider-Man leapt out of the way of the next shot as if by magic, and vanished behind a silo of granular sulfur.
The exo-suit facing them was massive, at least twelve feet tall with shoulder-mounted rotary guns, and far bulkier than Tony’s Iron Man armor. ...It had to be, without an arc reactor to power it.
“The Warmonger...” Iron Man breathed, “-Stane actually built the damn thing knowing that it would kill-”
“What’s the problem?” Cap asked, quickly.
“Atomic power,” Iron Man replied shortly, looking around and reading the symbols on the chemical silos around them, “-if we win, everybody here loses.”
“He’d break right out of the Lead Zeppelin, wouldn’t he?” Cap stated.
“Oh, yeah. That attack only worked on Radioactive Man because- -shit!” Iron Man dodged a mortar round, just in time.
“You’ve got to get him under water!” Fury shouted, from over near the freight elevator.
“Do I look like a freakin’ submarine?” Iron Man shouted back.
“Well you sure are yellow!” Fury snarled.
Scarlet Witch ignored her teammates, and hexed one of the Warmonger’s shoulder-guns into jamming.
“Nice work,” Spider-Man said, approvingly. He looked up at the way the silos towered into the twilit sky, and scampered up the back of one.
Stealthily, he began spinning a canopy of web over the entire battlefield, thin-stranded but strong.
“That thing’s bigger than you-” Cap began.
“Yes, I GOT that part,” Iron Man agreed testily, squeezing together a steel ladder into a ball that he could throw like a child making a snowball.
“Is he more magnetic than you?” Cap asked.
Iron Man paused, and hurled the ball towards the Warmonger armor with the full force of a hand-repulsor blast behind it. While the momentary distraction lasted, he scanned his enemy.
Iron Man’s eye-slits flickered pale orange.
“Good call, Cap,” he said, selecting a transistor-boosted electromagnet from the compartment on his belt. “-Spider!”
“Yeah boss?” Peter said, swinging over.
“Web this to the back of his head or something,” Iron Man ordered, pressing the small device into his hand.
“-On it!” Spider-Man promised, and swung back up into the maze of silos and scaffolding.
Warmonger fired a line of Phosphorus rounds after him, which Iron Man put a stop to by repulsor-blasting the other armor squarely in the face.
Warmonger blew away half the empty silo Iron Man was using for cover, and it began to tip over. Cap was thrown left towards where the Scarlet Witch was, but Iron Man and Fury were still on the same side of the platform, and had to dive for it to avoid the falling metal tower.
“Fury, can you get a missile launch authorized?” Iron Man demanded, picking himself up.
“Is the pope Catholic?” Fury shouted back. “-What are ya plannin’ on doing, hitting him with it?”
“Using it for magnetic flypaper and dumping him in the Atlantic.”
“-You’re not askin’ for a nuke, are ya?” Fury asked, dubiously.
“God, no. Plutonium would just catalyze the reaction when his suit reaches-” Iron Man began.
“WATCH OUT!” Fury yelled.
Iron Man fired his boot-jets without asking why, and narrowly missed being pile-driven through the side of the downed silo. Warmonger turned, took the two sides of the riven steel plating in his hands, and ripped them apart, striding back through.
-
Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, 6:30 PM (same day).
Tony woke up with his ears still ringing. He could feel currents of air buffeting him from the right-hand side alone, and the heady, silent rush of super-powered flight as someone carried him.
Opening his eyes, Tony found himself in the arms of a beautiful woman. The surface of her blonde hair flickered in the rush of wind the way the edge of a frayed flag does, and the fact that she wasn’t squinting at this speed made her seem far more than human.
“Well, that’s a welcome sight...” Tony grinned behind his faceplate.
“Welcome back, Iron Man,” Warbird smiled down at him.
“How long was I out?” Tony asked, perfectly happy with being carried Superman-style.
“Long enough for Cap to call me twice, and Colonel Fury to pull his disappearing act when the Feds showed up.”
“Hmm,” Tony responded, philosophically.
“Fury also radioed in to tell to tell you ‘kiss the little mechanic for me’. ...Any idea what he meant by that?” Warbird asked, archly.
Tony laughed.
“Fury suffers from the delusion that I’m going steady with the guy who repairs my armor,” Tony explained, casually.
“Any truth to that?” Warbird asked, raising an eyebrow.
“We have more of what you’d call an open relationship,” Tony smirked. “And... thanks for getting me off that missile, lady. When I couldn’t break out of the magnetic field from Warmonger’s suit, I... that was a bad moment.”
“What are friends for?” Warbird smiled, looking up at the faint line of lights becoming clearer on the horizon.
“Well... now that you mention it, can you call Cap?” Tony asked. “-I think the shockwave earlier knocked my helmet radio out, because all I can pick up is this god-awful talk show host...”
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 9:45 PM (same day).
Peter swung comfortably in a hammock-like nest of webbing over the desk in the garage, one red and blue foot dangling tiredly over the side. Like a loose strand of this lazily-spun web, a white phone cord looped down out of Peter’s nest to the phone jack on the wall below.
“-Yeah, it’s me-” Peter was saying.
Pause.
“No, no, no, I’m all right-”
Pause
“-Yeah, thanks for covering for me.”
Pause.
“-Well it’s... complicated.”
Pause.
“You saw what on the news?”
Pause.
“They finally caught the guy? Huh, whaddya know?”
Pause.
“-Tomorrow,” Peter yawned, “-I’m just going to crash here tonight.”
Pause.
“No, you don’t have to do that, Tony said it was cool if I-.”
Pause.
“Yeah, I did.”
Pause.
“...Yeah he is, why?”
Pause.
“Look man, Tony’s my boss, I’m trying not to think too hard about them-” Peter began.
Pause.
“Who, Wanda?”
Pause.
“Oh yeah, she said to thank you for the flowers...”
Pause.
“...Yeah, I think she’s Romanian or something.”
Pause.
“No, like I told you, we’re just friends. Her brother Pietro would atomize me,” Peter shuddered.
Pause.
“No, he’s-
Pause.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Peter smiled.
Pause.
“Goodnight, Harry.”
-
Tony’s bedroom, 9:46 PM (same day).
“Is Peter still on the phone?” Tony asked.
Steve hung his scale mail shirt over a hook on the back of the closet door and paused, head slightly to one side, listening.
“-Yes.”
“Hmff,” Tony folded an arm over his eyes, “-screw it, I can’t be bothered...”
“You’re just hungry,” Steve said, smiling at Tony sidelong and stepping out of his blue leather pants.
“I told you, I’m not recharging, it’s re-synchronizing the electrical-” Tony broke off, and gave Steve a dirty look from beneath his arm, “-oh come on, you’re smart enough to understand this stuff.”
Steve grinned and climbed into bed, touching a curve of the brass bed frame with his fingers as he did so. ‘Hungry’ or not, Tony had a kiss waiting for him.
“Plug this in for me, will ya?” Tony said, pressing the electrical connector for the arc reactor into Steve’s hand without looking at it.
Steve closed his fingers around the warm metal and plastic plug. He’d seen it before, and it had always reminded him of a telephone switchboard plug from his own time, or the connector for a pilot’s radio headset, long and silver-bright.
The temperature and weight of the metal was off, though... too heavy for stainless steel or silver, and it didn’t hold the heat of Tony’s hand the way it should have...
Steve wondered what it was made of, and made a mental note to ask later.
He reached down and ran his thumb across the arc’s left-hand socket, then plugged the connector in smoothly, without issuing any sort of warning or countdown.
Tony shivered for a moment, then his whole body relaxed and he breathed easier.
...For all the times Tony had caught Steve eyeing the arc reactor like it was kinky underwear of the very best kind, the blonde had still chosen to plug him in as if doing a serious medical procedure. Interesting.
“-Okay?” Steve asked with a slight smile, hand on Tony’s arm.
“Mmm,” Tony nodded sleepily, “-did it jus’ fine.”
Steve lay back, and gathered Tony’s head against his shoulder. Tony scooted in a little closer, and felt the power cord pull straight against his chest.
“...I need a longer cord,” Tony decided, frowning and moving back. “...This’s a twelve. Need to make a fifteen, maybe a twenty...”
“Twenty,” Steve whispered into his hair.
Tony looked up at him curiously.
“Any special reason for that, Rogers?”
“Well, it- -might come in handy,” Steve explained reasonably.
“Hmm...” One end of Tony’s mustache quirked upwards, “-yeah, I could make one of those.”
Steve moved closer so the current cord would reach, and Tony re-settled himself with a quiet sigh. Steve pressed a kiss to his temple, then lay back against Tony’s pillow and shut his eyes.
Tony drifted somewhere between sleep and waking, riding the steady hum of the power from the wall.
His mind wandered, and he saw other cities. He saw a canyon with sheer walls. A silver twin-engine fighter plane chasing clouds like a high-speed flechette round. Tall, silent monoliths of neon, wavering in the rain. A glowing subway map, and a hundred, a thousand fluxuations of weight and momentum sparking back along the tracks...
Tony came fully awake suddenly, eyes open.
He let out a breath, and reached up to unplug the power cord from his chest. It didn’t feel any different out than it had in, which meant the synch had finished long ago. Tony let the cord slip out of his fingers to the floor, and raised his head a little.
Steve was out cold beside him, lips slightly parted, the arm that wasn’t around Tony curled up above his head.
...Damn.
Tony could hardly blame him though, and with Peter sleeping over downstairs, maybe it was just as well...
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 4:55 PM.
Peter clipped the last of his drying photographs to the web-line he’d strung back and forth across the bathroom ceiling, and switched out the red light bulb for a regular one to examine them.
An oak tree in the park, with a bird just taking off from one of its branches.
A dog of uncertain breed, wearing a frayed camouflage bandanna, and sticking it’s wet black nose right up towards the camera.
The soaped window of a building that had been broken into, from the inside.
An elderly Chinese lady on a bus, her hair rolled up in a severe hairdo secured by a pair of long wooden chopsticks.
Harry Osborne in a rumpled button-down shirt, buried in physics class homework, looking up with an expression of humor and long-suffering patience.
A beautiful dark-blue car in the sun.
Several of Mary Jane Watson dressed as Shakespeare’s Juliet, and one candid shot of her sitting on the grass in front of the school with a sandwich poised in one hand, studying a small book that lay open in her lap.
A shot of Tony that was mostly shadows, dominated by the cold blue-orange flame of the welding torch in his hand.
Tony asleep on the couch in far better light, worn black boots crossed over one armrest, face hidden beneath a folded newspaper.
Iron Man breaking mach one, from unwisely close range- -he’d blurred that one.
A full-length shot of Captain America, standing with one foot on the corner of a red-brick building and looking capable.
Steve’s unmasked face, focusing as he painted something detailed onto the tank of a silver-gray motorcycle.
Aunt May’s flower bed, before the nights had turned to frost.
Luke Cage lifting up a broken slab of re-barred concrete, while one firefighter reached into the space underneath for a trapped child, and another in the foreground gave orders to someone out of the frame.
A shot of himself as Spider-Man, swinging off one of the steel supports that now formed a hard, complex latticework between the buildings of Wall Street. Two police cars and a dump-truck hauling rubble drove on the cleared street below him, and an American flag had been hung from one of the beams that ran across horizontally. ...Someone had even found the time to spray paint ‘I heart NY’ on a girder planted in the sidewalk to the dump-truck’s left.
A huge mob of dead lava-men in an intersection near the theater district, still coated and anonomized by the glistening coat of unnatural ice that had frozen them in mid-charge.
A full-length shot of Nick Fury, in the act of ordering him to put away the camera.
Dr. Strange from a slight down-angle, caught with one hand gripping the edge of his high-collared cloak, his serious expression and the frost caught in his dark hair making him seem far older.
Wanda Maximoff... just her profile and the edge of a fire escape railing in the background, as the late afternoon sun painted her in all the colors of warmth.
Two looters, encased in web along with the color TV they were in the act of stealing, suspended from a lamppost.
War Machine in flight, lifting a city bus.
A young NYPD cop, glaring uneasily at Hawkeye’s back as if unsure whether to pull him out of the assembled group of costumed heroes and arrest him or not.
Daredevil and Misty Knight looking exhausted, sitting on the wide, flat steps of a high-rise apartment building.
Warbird handing the Scarlet Witch a Styrofoam cup that steamed promisingly in what had been the early-morning chill, and Wanda looking up at her with a smile.
The Avengers in full sunlight on the steps of their headquarters a week later, with Steve and Thor standing in the middle.
Tony leaning one arm against the jukebox, and watching with interest as Steve picked out a song. It had been something by Johnny Cash that time, Peter remembered-
Peter’s Spider-sense tingled, just preceding a loud but familiar knock.
“Hey Peter! Are you done in there?” Tony called through the bathroom door.
“Y- yeah almost, but can leave I these up to dry until-” Peter began.
“Whatever, suit up!” Tony cut him off. “-We’ve got creeps in a hijacked coast guard cutter attacking a container ship near Ellis Island...”
“Where’s Steve? Is he meeting us there?”
“He’s already up on the roof,” Tony yelled back, over the first crashing chords of ‘Immigrant song’, “-less talking, more long johns...”
Peter rolled his eyes, and pulled on his mask.
---
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Everything is right about it! It's so gracefully constructed. I admire how Tony's life has been touched by pain and loss, but he's had the strength to build himself a new one--emotionally as well as financially. And I suspect Peter is happier here, with fellow superheroes/friends to provide the support network he always loses in the comics. He and Tony strike me as the kind of adoptive family people build when they don't have anyone else.
It's good to see Fury in action, devious and shady but firmly on the side of good. And I love the divide between the socially acceptable heroes and the "rebels" who're just as decent but don't make the law feel as comfortable. And how the two groups respect each other and fall together when something happens.
I also love the way politics forms obstacles that require cleverness to navigate. It's great to see superheroes do more than punch bad guys in the face, and suspense built by something other than giving the villain a new power. The conspiracy lends a quiet oppressiveness, lurking in the background while the heroes go about their lives, and it's heightened by the charming daily scenes. In fact, the whole contrast between "day in the life" and "day in the life of a superhero" is brilliant.
You describe Peter's photos so beautifully; I can compose the images in my head, and they're lovely. The descriptions communicate his talent. It also does a splendid job of bringing home the nature of the story: the candid view, the superhero as a person, and creates characterization for Peter, that this is how he sees them. He's such a goof, but he's a good, sweet, loving person.
I also love that 15 minute jump from laying out the plan to Iron Man being rescued from the insanity by Warbird. :D It's so Tony.
Now, I shall stop babbling. But I'm tempted to adopt this as my temporary canon while I wait for the Marvel writers to get their heads on straight.
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That daily life/superhero thing is exactly what I was trying to get across here and I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it. Sometimes it's hard to know. When the timing of this chapter started to condense on me, I wasn't sure if that would work at all, but finally I just crossed my fingers and went with it.
This chapter is... not quite an embodiment of Murphy's law, but just one of those days/fortnights that never seems to end.
It was a stress test. They trusted each other, and they all passed.
Thank you for the comment about temporary canon. I've got a few ideas about where to go from here, but I like the way Peter ended this one for me, and I'm not sure if I should mess with it.
Peter truly is a wonderful kid, both artistically, personally, and as a hero. I think part of the point of this whole AU was seeing what he could be if he -wasn't- constantly isolated and under fire.
I like playing with that theme a lot, both for him and Tony.
Steve... Steve is just epic.
He's also very blonde and dealing with all the issues of a soldier returning home... but he figured out who to trust a lot sooner in this universe, and that counts for more than he'll ever know.
Thank you, and goodnight.
no subject
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