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cap_ironman2010-01-22 01:08 pm
otherhazards.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2010-01-22 01:08 pm
Entry tags:
Fic: Knights of the Breakfast Table (Chapter 4)
Title: Knights of the Breakfast Table, Chapter 4 (sequel to ‘Juke Box Hero’)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
otherhazards
Beta:prettyarbitrary
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: Shield-fetish foreplay, f/f (see below), and accidental voyeurism.
Pairing/Characters: Steve/Tony, Warbird/Wanda, Harry+Mary Jane. (Co-starring Peter Parker, The Falcon, and The Man who should need no introduction.)
Summary: Some secrets get revealed. Others don’t.
===========================================================
Avengers Tower training room, 4:37 AM.
The scent hit him at the door.
It wasn’t a perfume nor strictly sweet, but it brought the changing room of a cabaret he’d once visited in the thirties to mind with such vivid clarity that Steve felt his face flush.
Dyed ostrich feathers, obscuring the view, then moving away to the cadence of swaying hips. A bouquet of dried roses, standing in a vase at the end of a long make-up table. The brush of warm, bare shoulders hurrying by him to get to the stage, and the smell of powder, and greasepaint. The whisper of silk, and the quiet, tight creak of corset-ribs. Painted lips, and rouged cheeks. Winking amusement in dark brown eyes outlined with something black, like Cleopatra.
Wigs. The click of hard-heeled shoes in poorly lit connecting passages, and the glare of the lights around the all-important mirrors, drawing beautiful, costumed women like a troop of butterflies. And this scent...
Steve shut his eyes, forgetting for a split-second that the scent didn’t -belong- here.
Then he heard quiet, desperately-controlled breathing and whirled around, shield upraised.
...Floating high up in the nearer left-hand corner of the room in what looked like a split-second attempt to hide, were Wanda and Warbird. ...Though Steve supposed that having seen this much of her, he might as well find out what Warbird’s first name was...
Suddenly aware that he was openly staring at the lovely, entwined shape his female teammates made, Steve turned around abruptly, the blush on his face and ears deepening.
“I, uh...” (ahem) “-pardon me.”
Wanda stifled a giggle.
“...Oh my god...” Warbird muttered, her voice almost lost against the soft skin of Wanda’s shoulder. Then louder she added, “-Cap- -we didn’t mean to- -we thought the gym would be empty at this hour. I’m not going to try and explain the rest.”
“Well...” Steve smiled, keeping his eyes firmly on the vaulting horse across from him, “...as you were, ladies.”
He turned and walked out of the room a little stiffly, closing the door behind him.
-
Tony’s kitchen, 6:55 AM.
“Where are my Corn Pops? Peter asked, head stuck in the refrigerator.
“No idea,” Steve replied, looking up from his newspaper with amusement.
“Dammit, I thought if I put them in the crisper when I went home, he wouldn’t...” Peter muttered, choosing a banana off the bunch on the counter instead.
Tony wandered in, unshaven and still stretching. He wore a large pair of dark blue NYPD sweat pants, and nothing else.
In the center of his chest, the arc reactor shimmered pale blue within its brushed steel casing.
“Good morning,” said Steve, smiling.
“DIE, Corn Pop thief,” said Peter, pointing.
“Those were yours?” Tony frowned. He slipped a hand around the back of Steve’s neck in a caress without looking.
“As you knew very well!” Peter accused.
“You know, if you put an open bag of Corn Pops in the crisper, the condensation-” Tony began, slipping into lecture mode.
“No. You are avoiding the issue. Crispy or not, those pops were MINE,” Peter insisted.
“-Don’t you have school today?” Tony asked, glancing up at the cat clock above the doorway.
“Tony, it’s -Tuesday-. I only have that class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.”
“Mmm. Must have slipped my mind,” Tony reflected, and bent down to give Steve a good-morning kiss.
“You are playing dirty,” Peter complained before the relatively brief kiss had ended, “-and that does NOT help a hungry spider...”
“-Or shut him up any more, apparently,” Tony observed, straightening.
“I could make oatmeal,” Steve offered, folding his newspaper.
“Um...” Peter began, tactfully.
“How does cinnamon toast grab you?” Tony suggested, instead.
“That would be cool,” Peter agreed.
He waited a moment until he was sure Tony was actually moving in the general direction of the toaster, then sat down next to Steve, and bent an elbow on the table.
“So, Steve, um... what are we doing tonight?”
“Luke heard about a smuggling ring on the East docks we should look into. We’re meeting at seven on the pier where you fought Doc Ock last summer.”
“-The new one,” Peter nodded, “-right.”
“I’m going to be out of the shop most of the day,” Steve added, reaching for his coffee cup.
“Oh yeah, you’ve got that new Avenger induction ceremony... How did War Machine get picked for that, anyway?” Peter asked curiously, beginning to peel and eat the banana he’d grabbed earlier.
“Why because he’s a superhero of course,” Tony cut in, cheerfully sarcastic, “-dont’cha read the papers?”
“He helped us against the Mandarin’s henchmen last week,” Steve answered Peter, “-he also stopped Attuma’s forces when they tried to sneak into the Atlantic through the Panama Canal, and he backed up Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch when the Lava-men had them pinned down on 48th st.-”
“-Was that before, or after Morgan started using the Maria Stark foundation to repair the damage to the city from super-powered battles?” Tony interrupted, punctuating his point with a used butter knife.
“Both, I think,” Steve said after a pause, “-but that had nothing to do with how I voted on War Machine, and you know it.”
Tony sighed, and lapsed into unhappy silence.
“The Maria Stark...” Peter paused, “-wait, isn’t- -you’re related to Morgan Stark? That Morgan Stark?”
“Distantly. Very, very distantly,” Tony ground out.
“First cousins on his father’s side,” Steve translated.
Tony flicked a small glob of butter off the knife-blade at him.
“O-kay, that’s... wow,” Peter acknowledged, grimly.
“I’m not concerned with Morgan Stark,” Steve put in, licking the dollop of butter off the back of his left hand, “-War Machine is the one I have to work with, he’s shown himself to be A-okay so far. He’s rough around the edges, but with a boss like that I’ll bet he has to be. ...He reminds me a lot of you actually,” Steve added, looking at Tony’s back.
“He’s -supposed- to, he’s wearing MY ARMOR,” Tony pointed out.
“He thinks Morgan invented it,” said Steve.
“I’m sure he does,” Tony snorted.
He put a large plate of toast and a dish of oddly tan-looking (sugar/cinnamon) butter in the center of the table. Tony took a piece of toast for himself, and held it in his mouth by one corner while he went back for plates.
Peter pointed to a piece of toast on the top of the pile.
“It’s not just me, is it? There’s a spider-web toast-stamp on this.”
“You’re welcome,” Tony smirked.
“You have way too much time on your hands,” Peter observed.
Tony put the plates down, and took back the plate of toast. Steve discreetly used his longer reach to snag a piece anyway.
“...Though it does look pretty cool, and um- -thanks for thinking of me?” Peter amended, smiling winningly.
The toast was returned. Tony poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot Steve had been drinking, and joined them at the breakfast table.
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 2:26 AM.
Tony sliced a sharp metal edge off of the faceplate of his new helmet, and held it up to the light, gleaming gray. The shapes came easily to him now, so different from the first time, or even from when he’d cut the Mark II out of an old red classic car body without altering the angles of some of the fairings...
God, that thing had sucked power. -He’d spent as much time skating as he had flying.
The scratch-built Mark III had been the first suit that was really as dangerous to his enemies as it was to himself, and he still had it in storage, repaired and re-sealed after his near-disastrous battle with the Black Knight over an airship moored above the East River.
With the Mark IV, he’d finally gotten the internal shock-absorption and padding system figured out, which meant he no longer had to live in a fading tattoo of mechanically-shaped bruises, or keep quite so many ice packs in the freezer of the downstairs fridge. When he’d crossed paths with the Hulk two months later, that upgrade had certainly saved his life...
The Mark V had been in some ways a stylistic throwback to the Mark II, but he’d returned to the hinged plate rather than telescoping design to allow for the use of a hollow-ceramic microbead alloy that could take almost any punishment as long as it wasn’t chafed or rasped, and thus needed to be encased in an inner and outer layer of metal.
...Or in the case of the Mark VI, an outer layer of cryogenically-tempered metal, and a far lighter inner coating of Teflon...
His current Mark VII armor had included a lot of aerodynamics and articulation improvements, as well as dabbling with solar power for extended flight range.
Steve had said that one looked ‘snappy’.
The Mark VIII would have many of the improvements of its predecessors, but one or two would be conspicuously absent, and certain plates in the arms and shoulders had been subtly thickened and contoured around an entirely new weapon, almost brutal in its simplicity...
Unlike every suit of armor Tony had built since the fateful Mark I, the Mark VIII was designed to take down one specific opponent.
Hopefully Steve was right about him, but if not... Tony would be ready.
-
The Theatre District, 9:20 PM.
Harry ran.
He didn’t know what was happening behind him, except that it was a superhero battle and many things were blowing up, and Peter had gone back to help someone. Part of Harry cringed at that thought, but he had Mary Jane running beside him, red hair loose, the square heels of her shoes loud on the concrete, and she changed everything.
Peter wouldn’t want Harry to come back, until he could be sure MJ was safe.
Harry ran, and felt like a coward anyway.
Finally the explosions sounded more faintly, and the streets were unnaturally empty of traffic. -New Yorkers drove with their radios on for a reason, and they could vanish like cockroaches at the flick of a light switch if a battle advisory was called.
Harry and MJ ducked into an alley to catch their breath, still shaken.
“Are- -you okay?” Harry asked, hand on the brick wall beside him.
“-Yes,” MJ nodded. “Harry- -Peter...”
“I know- -I’m going back for him,” Harry assured her.
“Spider-Man is there-” MJ began. “Do you think he-?"
“I saw him web you out of the way just before that marquee fell,” Harry nodded, “-I swear I think I my heart stopped-
-Spider-Man’s busy with that guy on the glider though...”
MJ’s face wavered as she looked at him, torn but resolute. Tonight she risked losing both of them, but Harry was right, he couldn’t leave Peter. They couldn’t leave Peter.
If she begged him to, Harry would probably stay here with her, safe. She knew what buttons to push. If she did that and Peter died though, it would destroy Harry from the inside out. Harry had to go, and she had to stay here. MJ had faced this reality before, and she still wasn’t sure who was getting the better end of the deal.
For now though-
“Harry?
“Yes?
“Don’t be a hero,” she kissed him then, hands cupping his face, and rising slightly on tiptoe to meet him at eye level. “-Just
go get Peter.”
Harry paused for a moment, lips parted. Then he nodded quickly, and headed back the way they had come.
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 2:41 PM.
“Yep,” Tony said, inspecting the fragment of circuit board still attached to the handful of wires on his desk, “-this is definitely Ostech.”
“But how would the Green Goblin get ahold of a SHIELD glider in the first place?” Peter wanted to know.
“Well that’s the question, isn’t it...?” Tony agreed, setting his jeweler’s glass down on the desk and leaning back in his chair a little.
“Hmm...” Peter frowned, chin in hand.
Tony reached over and pressed Peter’s forehead with two fingers.
Peter swung back and forth on his webline like an irritated pendulum. He favored Tony with a dubious look, then put out his hand upside-down to the corner of the desk, and stopped himself.
“Pre- existing technology can be bought, copied, given, or stolen,” Tony reviewed, “-and there’s no way the Goblin’s glider was built by an amateur. -This soldering’s too clean. Either Norman’s been dealing under the table, or the Goblin stole something and SHIELD either doesn’t know yet or has decided to cover it up. And that last one wouldn’t surprise me. Nick hates looking like he can’t control his own weapons...”
“-Even when it’s true,” Peter observed, folding his arms.
“Especially when it’s true,” Tony nodded.
He turned around and rummaged in one of the middle drawers of the tall tan filing cabinet, coming up with what appeared to be the manual for a commercial air conditioning unit circa 1964.
When he pressed a small metal stud on the side of his desk-lamp though, the desk light switched to a dim, pale-violet color, and a cleanly-drawn circuit diagram appeared on the yellowed pages of the manual in thin lines of luminescent blue.
“Now what you grabbed was here,” Tony began, flipping a few pages forwards and pointing to a newly-revealed diagram labeled ‘fuel system’. “-These four white wires connect the fuel injection system to the throttle module over here, and the black one’s there for timing control. This little white one with the red collar’s just there to record engine time, so that wasn’t important.”
“And since this fuel flow valve defaults to ‘full open’ when there’s no current,” Peter said, pointing awkwardly around Tony’s hand to the appropriate place on the diagram, “-it basically flooded his engine.”
“Exactly. That’s why he started trailing half-burned fuel and losing altitude so fast. The fuel mixture was spraying all over his igniter array, and vaporizing more than it was actually combusting, so he couldn’t get good compression.”
“Yeah, I get it. Um... Tony?”
“Yes?” Tony looked up.
“Why do you have the plans to the SHIELD glider? I mean... that is illegal, right?”
Tony sighed.
“Peter, no knowledge is actually -bad-, it’s just in how people use it. I don’t use other people’s designs without permission unless I absolutely have to, but obviously it’s still a good idea to understand the technology that’s out there,” Tony explained, reasonably. “-There’s nothing illegal in knowledge.”
“But SHIELD could still totally arrest you for having these plans, right?” Peter pressed.
“Uh... yes. But they would make the arrest on the assumption that I was planning to build or sabotage one.”
“Don’t um, get sent to jail okay?” Peter suggested, helpfully.
“I’m doing my best, Spider,” Tony assured him, slightly touched but mostly just annoyed by the remark.
“Tony?” Peter began, hesitantly.
“Yes?” Tony answered, testily.
“You’re... good at keeping secrets, right?”
“...Why?”
“When do you- -not keep secrets?” Peter asked, vaguely.
“Peter...” Tony paused, stood up, and rubbed his own forehead, “-sit down, will you?”
Peter chose a high, swivel-topped stool from in front of Tony’s workbench, dragged it over, and perched on it.
Tony put the plans back in the filing cabinet, and thought for a moment.
The webwork on the ceiling above Peter- (that, come hell or high water the boy would have cleaned off before the garage opened tomorrow) -looked rough. Half-assed and compulsively repaired, with only four original frame-threads crisscrossing in the center to create a base-eight web, and a slight unevenness in the squaring of the spiral.
Tony chose a beer and a Coke out of the refrigerator, and handed the Coke to Peter. He sat back in his desk chair, and crossed his boots on the desk beside the phone book.
“All right, run that by me again?” Tony waved a hand at him in a ‘roll tape’ motion.
Peter fidgeted with his Coke, but as always, was too polite to bolt before he finished it.
“I... I’ve always gone on the theory that the less my friends and family, you know, the civilian ones, knew about my caped crusades, the safer they would be, but um... it doesn’t always work out that way.”
“What happened?” Tony asked, quickly.
“Nothing! I mean... nobody was hurt this time...” Peter passed the bottle from his left hand to his right, but still didn’t drink.
“So... what almost happened?” Tony asked, relaxing a bit.
“Harry came back to rescue me when I fought the Green Goblin downtown the other night. I mean, he didn’t know I was Spider-Man, he was just looking for Peter Parker, and since I was in costume at the time, of course he couldn’t find me, and uh... Tony, he could have died. I mean... easily.”
“Hrmm...” Tony nodded gravely, and took a pull on his beer.
“And Mary Jane- -thank god Harry had the sense to get her to safety first, but she was worried about me too, and... You know how my enemies love grabbing her... What if it’s just her and me next time? Or if Harry-” Peter broke off, and sighed.
“You’re right, that’s a problem,” Tony agreed.
“So what do I do?” Peter demanded, “-if I tell them I’m Spider-Man, my enemies will have that much more reason to kidnap them, and if I don’t Harry’ll keep putting himself in danger for me every time I have to pull a quick-change...”
“There is no right answer, Peter,” Tony admitted with a sigh, “-it’s a percentages game. I’ve held a good man while he -died- from bullets he got protecting my identity as Iron Man.”
“Yinsen.”
“Yeah. But I’ve also had people try and blackmail me, get close to me to steal my designs, wait to attack me until I was out of costume, attack whoever I was dating out of costume... I was seeing this court stenographer once. Lovely black girl with plum-colored lipstick before it really caught on, and these eyes... she wore glasses with cats-eye frames, but they just kinda emphasized it... we met while Matt was putting the Rhino away the second time...” Tony held up two fingers.
Peter kept his silence.
“Well... anyway, the Exeter thought he was going to be implicated, found out who I was, and ah... not knowing who I was didn’t protect Carmen.”
“Ouch,” Peter acknowledged, quietly.
“Yeah...” Tony didn’t elaborate.
He didn’t elaborate on what he had done -afterwards-, either. Peter would have been in eighth grade at the time, and the sickening fear of that high-speed chase though the oncoming the traffic inside the Holland tunnel wasn’t something Tony wanted to describe out loud even to a college freshman.
...Even aside from the nauseating crunch of the British villain’s bones and jetpack slamming together into the cooling unit of a cab-over semi-truck at a combined velocity of over 120 miles per hour...
No. Peter didn’t need to hear that part.
Tony took a breath.
“It’s a guessing game, Peter. It’s a horrible, unfair, and -deadly- crapshoot. You just... think of all the logical contributing factors you can, think about the personalities involved, and who they are really and... You wing it. And then you fucking pray.”
Tony took another pull on his beer.
“...Ah,” Peter swallowed, and did the same with his Coke.
“Chin up, Spider. You’re still alive, aren’t you?” Tony pointed out.
“-It’s a lot easier to tell someone who you are when you’ve both got powers, isn’t it?” Peter said, shrewdly.
Tony smiled at him.
-
Tony’s bedroom, 10:40 PM.
“Steve...?” Tony began, both palms flat against Steve’s chest.
“Yeah?” Steve asked, glancing up at him.
“I was wondering something...”
“Shoot,” Steve smiled.
“Can I do something to your shield?” Tony asked, looking slightly mischievous.
“It’s not a target, Tony,” Steve replied, shortly.
“Actually, that wasn’t what I had in mind. ...But that means people have asked you if they could use your shield for obscene target practice before, doesn’t it?”
“...I don’t want to talk about it,” Steve sighed.
“Well, it’d be easier to clean than armor,” Tony reflected, philosophically.
“But it’s still ME-!” Steve blurted out. “-I mean... not literally, but it... have you ever been hit with small rocks, fruit, eggs-?”
“I got egged in my armor once,” Tony nodded.
“Well that’s how it would feel. Like it was my face they were hitting instead of my shield. ...I just don’t like the idea, even in fun,” Steve explained, frowning.
“I will not intentionally come on your shield,” Tony promised, and kissed him on the nose.
...Though it went without saying that by resting as close to the bed as it did, the shield took its chances.
“...What did you want with my shield, then?” Steve asked, cautiously optimistic.
“I wanted to lay on it,” Tony replied, “-on my back.”
“Oh. Well, that would be all right,” Steve agreed, with a relieved smile. He patted Tony’s hip one-handed. “-Scoot.”
Tony grinned, and slid off of Steve to the side, letting him up.
Steve stretched off the bed in a way that had to be illegal somewhere, and retrieved his shield from its place against the bedside table.
Tony watched both man and shield return to the bed with close attention.
Steve paused, glancing over at Tony’s face just one more time to be sure he wasn’t letting his shield in for anything nasty. Tony looked reasonably trustworthy, if just a little... keen on the whole thing.
Steve set his shield down on the sheets, star up.
Tony glanced at Steve with a lopsided smile of secret delight, and ran his hand over the shield’s barely-textured surface, like an Egyptologist brushing the sand from a row of inscribed hieroglyphics.
Then he sat with his back to it, bottom not quite -on- the shield, and slowly, slowly leaned back.
“Ah-!” The metal was cool, not exactly cold, and it adhered slightly to the faint sheen of nervous sweat along the crease of Tony’s spine. The metal warmed quickly against his skin.
Damn this thing must be conductive, Tony thought, with a faint shiver.
“It is,” Steve told him, evenly.
Tony blinked, not realizing he’d spoken aloud, then shut his eyes as he felt Steve’s fingers gently cupping the back of his neck, lowering him down the rest of the way. Tony’s back popped twice, and he groaned softly.
“...I knew it,” he sighed happily, eyes still closed, “-it’s just the right angle...”
Steve laughed, and ran his hand along Tony’s chest and side, feeling the ways the addition of the shield had opened the familiar angles.
...How would these contours shift if Tony lay over the shield on his side? Or forwards- -but then the shield would put too much pressure on Tony’s arc reactor... unless the shield was moved down... which would, Steve thought with a covert blush, look far too much like an invitation. And... The same would be true if Tony sat on the shield and lay down as he was now from that position, come to think of it...
Steve felt vaguely uneasy, and... Very, very turned on.
Tony was still smiling sleepily, and watching him from between not-quite-closed dark eyelashes.
“-You planned this,” Steve realized.
“...Can I help it if your brain is a physical probability engine?” Tony grinned, stretching his arms up above his head and arching his back against the shield a little.
“Get up,” Steve ordered.
Tony paused, frowning, and looked up to see if the blonde was serious.
Steve was.
Tony sighed disappointedly, sat up, and rubbed the back of his neck.
“Sit up on your knees in the middle of the bed, and close your eyes,” Steve instructed.
Tony’s eyes flicked to Steve’s face with intense curiosity, then closed. He knelt in the indicated spot, and waited. Steve had his shield in hand now, Tony could hear it the by the soft squeak of the brown leather arm-straps.
Why brown leather? Tony wondered suddenly. Why brown straps, when everything else leather on Steve’s costume had been dyed red, white or blue?
Steve’s hand touched his wrist, and Tony could feel the other man’s breath whisper against the back of his neck. Tony’s unspoken question was lost.
“If you want to play with this shield,” Steve began quietly, “-you have to understand what it is first.”
He guided the fingers of Tony’s right hand around one of the arm straps, and closed them. The leather was thick, two identical plies of cowhide machine-stitched together, worn smooth in places from daily use, and heavy as a damned -horse- collar in Tony’s hand...
Tony swallowed, quietly.
“You have to understand what it’s a part of, and I don’t just mean me,” Steve said calmly, raising Tony’s arms up by the wrists.
“All right...?” Tony managed, a little breathlessly.
“You have to know that it’s an unrepeatable experiment,” Steve continued, the corner of his cleft chin -just- scratching the back of Tony’s neck down near his shoulders. “-And that there’s not another like it in the world. If something happens to this shield... ...it can never be replaced.”
“Okay...” Tony breathed, steadying a little.
Steve began fitting Tony’s hands through the arm straps above his head.
“...You have to know where it’s been. You have to understand that it’s saved my life. You have to know that men have seen this shield when they thought they were utterly defeated, and the sight of it kept them fighting...”
Steve slid the shield down to the level of Tony’s elbows, effectively trapping him.
“You have to know that I’ve condoned its use for a pillow, a lunch-table, an umbrella, an operating table, and a children’s sled...”
The straps slid lower, almost to the level of Tony’s shoulders...
“You have to know that I’ve cleaned blood-spatters off it, and paint, and vanilla ice cream, and tiny smears of lead from bullets, and some stuff from the floor of a barn that I’d rather not discuss...”
Lower, and Tony felt the smooth, hard edge of the metal resting against the base of his neck, and against the muscles at the small of his back.
“And most of all, you have to know what it feels like... on,” Steve finished, and put his hands on Tony’s shoulders. Then softly, “-put your arms down.”
Tony folded his arms down loosely at his sides, and felt the full weight of the shield settle squarely across his shoulders for the first time.
It felt... Tony couldn’t put it into words, but he thought first of ‘the soul of the sword’, the legend that a samurai’s will had to be stronger than that of his sword, or the sword would wield -him-.
He thought next of the air show at which he’d first seen the Thunderbirds, and the way the mighty roar of the F-84F Thunderstreaks’ jet engines had drowned out the music of the band, the shimmer of the sun on hot black tarmac, the scent of freshly-made caramel-popcorn... leaving only the feel of the wind against his face.
He thought of the strange, not-quite-acknowledged sensation he sometimes got while plugged into the city’s power grid, that supralogical instinct that he was now part of a gestalt electrical nervous system far greater than the one in his body alone...
Tony felt the steadying weight of Steve’s big hands around his shoulders...
...And breathed.
“Open your eyes,” Steve smiled, against the back of Tony’s hair.
Tony did so, and blinked a little.
“How does it feel?” Steve asked.
“It’s... heavy,” Tony replied, sounding surprised.
“Its ten and a half pounds, without the straps,” Steve countered, not quite laughing against his ear.
“Ah... well, it feels heavy...” Tony fumbled, “-are you leaning on it?” He frowned.
“No,” Steve laughed.
“Maybe the Vibranium’s capable of preserving some kind of wave-harmonic record...” Tony said thoughtfully, not sounding half as coherent as he thought he did.
“You mean what if my shield remembers where it’s been?” Steve translated, easily.
“Well, obviously it doesn’t have those kinds of conscious connections, but with the little-understood kinetic absorption properties of Vibranium, it might well contain some kind of static after-image, like a- -like the way light and shadow come up on photographic paper, only with a different part of the energy spectrum,” Tony explained, defensively.
“Could be,” Steve agreed carefully, and pressed a kiss against the side of Tony’s neck.
“Cap-?” Tony began, sounding a little breathless.
“Yes?” Steve murmured.
“A- -are you trying to record something?”
“Are you still up for it?” Steve asked, not pressuring him.
“Are you kidding?” Tony demanded, looking back over his shoulder with a slightly wild light in his eyes.
“So that’s a yes?” Steve grinned, folding his arms around Tony’s chest, shield and all.
“Definitely- -ohhh, I can feel your body heat through it...” Tony sighed, closing his eyes.
“Do you want to keep it on?” Steve asked.
“Actually... no,” Tony admitted, drawing back a little, “-the shield is, ah... yours. And besides, the lower edge of the metal is really digging into my back here...”
“It does that,” Steve nodded wryly.
Tony shrugged out of the shoulder straps on his second try, and Steve guided the shield the rest of the way down off of his arms. He set the shield aside, and gathered Tony back against his chest, skin to skin.
“Mmmm... this feels better without metal in the way,” Steve smiled against Tony’s shoulder.
“I could make a case f’r either one,” Tony sighed, leaning back happily.
“How about we try cracking your back again?” Steve suggested, not quite innocently.
“-I like the way you think,” Tony decided, with a piratical grin.
Steve let him go, and Tony spread himself back over the hard, smooth curve of the shield. There were slight breaks in texture between the different colors of the shield’s stars-and-stripes design, but the skin on his back wouldn’t be sensitive enough to- -oh goddamn, he could feel the imprint... of the star, at least...
Steve ran both hands up along Tony’s chest, thumbs dividing around the casing of the arc reactor and smoothly rubbing around the skin at its base. Tony caught his breath suddenly, and grabbed Steve’s shoulders, eyes open.
Steve’s fingers curled around Tony’s collarbone, then slid back down his entire torso along the same path, and traced up the backs of his thighs.
“Hnn...” Tony whimpered, kneading Steve’s shoulders encouragingly.
“Heheh...” Steve leaned in, and nuzzled the base of Tony’s ribcage. This close to the reactor’s power sockets, he could feel the faintest brush of a static charge against the outer edge of his hair...
“Steve-” Tony’s fingers found the back of Steve’s head, and-
The phone rang.
Not the regular phone either, but the black one just under the edge of the bed beside Tony’s emergency backup battery.
Steve groaned, and pressed his face against Tony’s abs in denial.
“God... dammit-!” Tony swore, squeezing his eyes shut momentarily.
Steve sighed, and let him up.
Tony rolled off the shield, and thrust his hand down off the edge of the bed with a bestial snarl.
“YES?” He answered, through gritted teeth.
Pause.
“Uh-huh.”
Pause.
“Moleman- -why...?” Tony whined, raking his wavy black bangs out of his eyes with one hand.
Pause.
“All right, all right... -fuck-...”
Pause.
“-Up yours, Luke!” Tony yelled back, and slammed the receiver down hard.
Steve sighed again, and reached for his pants.
"You know Steve, I feel like doing some real violence out there today..." Tony vented, fishing a pair of boxer shorts out of his top dresser drawer.
“Well, the sooner we get this done...” Steve began, philosophically.
-
Tony’s kitchen, 6:20 AM.
Peter poured himself a glass of milk by the blinding light of the refrigerator, and slumped into one of the seats at the kitchen table. He pulled off his mask, and drank.
Ten minutes later, Tony wandered out scratching the side of his jaw. He turned on the light, and started.
“Hi Tony,” Peter greeted him, miserably.
Tony frowned at him for a moment. There didn’t seem to be any signs of visible injury or madness, so he patted Peter’s shoulder, and wandered past him towards the coffee-maker.
“What’cha doing sitting in the dark, Spider?” Tony asked, spooning ground coffee into the filter.
“I got here early, and I didn’t want to wake you,” Peter shrugged.
“Smart boy,” Tony muttered. He filled the carafe with water from the tap, and poured it in.
“I told Harry,” Peter said, studying a scratch on the worn white paint of the tabletop.
Tony glanced back at him. He replaced the carafe, and pressed the ‘on’ switch.
“Like that, is it?” He asked, turning.
“I... don’t really know yet,” Peter admitted, in a voice that sounded dangerously close to cracking. “I told him, and... at first he was just shocked, you know? And then he was like, ‘that’s cool, man,’ and... Then I went over how that was why I kept disappearing, and why I never said anything to MJ, and- -then he got upset and said I shouldn’t have treated him like a child, and I said-” Peter broke off, and sighed. He ran a hand back through his damp, mask-flattened hair. “Well... Harry spent the night at his dad’s house.”
“That’s not good,” Tony agreed, remembering Peter’s friend’s eagerness to please and talkative nature.
“Do you think Mr. Osborne would-?”
“Norman Osborne can kiss my ass,” Tony said bluntly, “-if he tries to blackmail you with your secret identity, we’ve got the wiring you ripped out of the Goblin Glider with part of an Ostech circuit board attached, and it’s all hearsay at this point anyway. -Keep an extra careful eye out for being tailed for the next month or so, though.”
Peter nodded, and drank some of his milk.
“Have you seen that guy in black on the hover board again?” Tony asked, getting up and starting a round of pancakes.
“No, not since last Friday. I didn’t follow him then because I had Harry with me, and it’s not like this guy’s done anything, that I know of... Between us, I don’t think I would have caught him anyway. He was there and gone in a moment, like this shadow racing across the moon...”
-
Outside the Iron Horse Garage, 8:43 AM (same day).
Harry waited uneasily, leaning against the hood of his car.
It was already too hot for the jacket he held folded over his arm, but that jacket, like the pastel button-down shirt he was wearing, had been chosen for going out the night before, not for the harsh light of a New York morning. He should have been in class almost an hour ago. Harry had driven for a long time the night before, driven until his eyes were dry again, and when he stopped in the parking lot of a harbor overlook, the yellow-white glare of the streetlights no longer spread in his vision like Christmas ornaments.
He was part of a larger world now, and Harry knew without a shadow of a doubt, that he didn’t want any part of it.
But he did owe Peter an apology. Superhero or not, Peter was still... Peter and his friend had only revealed his masked identity in the first place in an attempt to keep him safe. It was such a Peter thing to do, in such a deeply fucked-up, innocent, and twisted way...
Would this have made a difference?
Would knowing that the only reason Peter had never asked out MJ was because he was a masked superhero of all things really stopped Harry from dating her?
Well probably, but it would hardly be fair to break up with her now, and besides... Harry didn’t want to.
Were he and MJ really such a bad thing?
God, as if he hadn’t been living in Peter Parker’s shadow enough...
A superhero.
Spider-Man no less, Iron Man’s partner, one of the very institutions of New York City...
Yet still Peter, still naive enough to miss what was going on right under his nose, still as much of a target as he had been in high school, but now hunted by far stronger, far deadlier bullies, men with powers of their own, from whom Harry could no longer protect him.
He was useless. Again. Right when he could no longer afford to be.
...And what if- -what if the Goblin learned who Peter was, and came after MJ?
Questions pounded in his Harry’s skull like the headache behind his eyes. He checked his watch again, but it didn’t make the garage door open.
He sighed, got back in his car, and turned on the radio.
‘--black curtains near the station.
Blackroof country, no gold pavements, tired starlings.
Silver horses ran down moonbeams in your dark eyes.
Dawnlight smiles on you leaving, my contentment.
I'll wait in this place where the sun never shines...
Wait in this place where the shadows run from themselves-’
Darkly appropriate, ironic, and more than a little weird.
...Harry had the feeling a lot of things were going to be like that now.
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 4:35 PM.
‘--You get the picture? (yes, we see)
That's when I fell for (the leader of the pack)
My folks were always putting him down (down, down)
They said he came from the wrong side of town-
(whatcha mean when ya say that he came from the wrong side of town?)
They told me he was bad-’
“No, next week,” Tony said loudly, “-I told you last Tuesday I couldn’t fit you in before the- -hangonnasecond...” Tony covered the mouthpiece of the receiver with one hand, and glared at the covey of teenagers clustered around the jukebox. “OFF,” he ordered, pointedly.
Harry and MJ began a sudden and frantic discussion over how to accomplish this, on a jukebox that was already playing.
‘-But I knew he was sad
That's why I fell for (the le-’
Peter opened his mouth as if to join in, closed it, then reached down and unplugged the thick black cord at the back. The song died in mid-syllable. Tony gave Peter a thumbs-up, and uncovered the mouthpiece.
“Hey, you still there?” He began again.
Pause.
“-Yeah, after the fifteenth.” Tony picked up a pencil and started writing out a list on a piece of scrap paper.
Pause.
“Could you do Wednesday?”
Pause.
“Yeah, all right.”
Pause.
“No, no, just put ‘em all in a bag, and bring ‘em in.”
Pause.
“Okay, see you then. Bye,” Tony hung up. “YOU. Teenagers with a car...” He beckoned.
“Me?” Harry asked, walking over towards the desk.
“No, all of you. Take this list, and run down to the ‘Pho Tigers Garden’. It’s that place on- -Peter, you know.”
“Gotcha, boss,” Peter nodded.
“I can’t read Vietnamese,” Harry objected, frowning at the list.
“Never mind, just give this note to Khan when you get there,” Tony assured him.
“-Money?” Peter reminded Tony, guilelessly.
“Oh, right,” Tony handed Harry a twenty, and the three of them left.
Tony looked around the now -quieter- garage with satisfaction.
Blonde hair shining gold in the natural lighting up near the entrance, Steve was talking with The Falcon (Sam Wilson, since they were both out of costume) and sketching one of the garage’s more permanent customers. He was an easygoing older man with slicked back steel-gray hair, a well-worn black leather vest, and a pair of brown-lensed aviator shades. ...How Steve had talked the man into sitting for him Tony wasn’t sure, but he found himself smiling anyway.
Tony advanced on the jukebox, and plugged it back in. He and pressed ‘COINS’, ‘0’, and ‘PLAY’ together. The jukebox unselected ‘Leader of the Pack’, and obediently went back into standby mode.
“You guys wanna hear something new?” Tony called over his shoulder.
“Yeah,” Sam agreed.
“Sure, why not?” The old man shrugged, turning as he answered and messing up Steve’s drawing perspective once and for all.
“-It’s not by that singer who calls himself ‘Alice’, is it?” Steve asked, warily.
“No, no, this is somebody else,” Tony promised, pressing ‘A-10’, then ‘PLAY’.
A layered guitar score started, then a slow backbeat with a snare drum in there somewhere...
‘Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Weird and Gilly
The spiders from Mars. He played it left hand
But made it too far
Became the special man, then we were Ziggy's band
Ziggy really sang, screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo
Like some cat from Japan-’
Sam looked nonplussed, and folded his arms.
Steve exchanged a glance of complete understanding with the old man, who got up and patted Steve’s shoulder as he gathered his helmet to leave.
“-Good luck there, son.”
---
Author:
otherhazards Beta:
prettyarbitrary 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: Shield-fetish foreplay, f/f (see below), and accidental voyeurism.
Pairing/Characters: Steve/Tony, Warbird/Wanda, Harry+Mary Jane. (Co-starring Peter Parker, The Falcon, and The Man who should need no introduction.)
Summary: Some secrets get revealed. Others don’t.
===========================================================
Avengers Tower training room, 4:37 AM.
The scent hit him at the door.
It wasn’t a perfume nor strictly sweet, but it brought the changing room of a cabaret he’d once visited in the thirties to mind with such vivid clarity that Steve felt his face flush.
Dyed ostrich feathers, obscuring the view, then moving away to the cadence of swaying hips. A bouquet of dried roses, standing in a vase at the end of a long make-up table. The brush of warm, bare shoulders hurrying by him to get to the stage, and the smell of powder, and greasepaint. The whisper of silk, and the quiet, tight creak of corset-ribs. Painted lips, and rouged cheeks. Winking amusement in dark brown eyes outlined with something black, like Cleopatra.
Wigs. The click of hard-heeled shoes in poorly lit connecting passages, and the glare of the lights around the all-important mirrors, drawing beautiful, costumed women like a troop of butterflies. And this scent...
Steve shut his eyes, forgetting for a split-second that the scent didn’t -belong- here.
Then he heard quiet, desperately-controlled breathing and whirled around, shield upraised.
...Floating high up in the nearer left-hand corner of the room in what looked like a split-second attempt to hide, were Wanda and Warbird. ...Though Steve supposed that having seen this much of her, he might as well find out what Warbird’s first name was...
Suddenly aware that he was openly staring at the lovely, entwined shape his female teammates made, Steve turned around abruptly, the blush on his face and ears deepening.
“I, uh...” (ahem) “-pardon me.”
Wanda stifled a giggle.
“...Oh my god...” Warbird muttered, her voice almost lost against the soft skin of Wanda’s shoulder. Then louder she added, “-Cap- -we didn’t mean to- -we thought the gym would be empty at this hour. I’m not going to try and explain the rest.”
“Well...” Steve smiled, keeping his eyes firmly on the vaulting horse across from him, “...as you were, ladies.”
He turned and walked out of the room a little stiffly, closing the door behind him.
-
Tony’s kitchen, 6:55 AM.
“Where are my Corn Pops? Peter asked, head stuck in the refrigerator.
“No idea,” Steve replied, looking up from his newspaper with amusement.
“Dammit, I thought if I put them in the crisper when I went home, he wouldn’t...” Peter muttered, choosing a banana off the bunch on the counter instead.
Tony wandered in, unshaven and still stretching. He wore a large pair of dark blue NYPD sweat pants, and nothing else.
In the center of his chest, the arc reactor shimmered pale blue within its brushed steel casing.
“Good morning,” said Steve, smiling.
“DIE, Corn Pop thief,” said Peter, pointing.
“Those were yours?” Tony frowned. He slipped a hand around the back of Steve’s neck in a caress without looking.
“As you knew very well!” Peter accused.
“You know, if you put an open bag of Corn Pops in the crisper, the condensation-” Tony began, slipping into lecture mode.
“No. You are avoiding the issue. Crispy or not, those pops were MINE,” Peter insisted.
“-Don’t you have school today?” Tony asked, glancing up at the cat clock above the doorway.
“Tony, it’s -Tuesday-. I only have that class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.”
“Mmm. Must have slipped my mind,” Tony reflected, and bent down to give Steve a good-morning kiss.
“You are playing dirty,” Peter complained before the relatively brief kiss had ended, “-and that does NOT help a hungry spider...”
“-Or shut him up any more, apparently,” Tony observed, straightening.
“I could make oatmeal,” Steve offered, folding his newspaper.
“Um...” Peter began, tactfully.
“How does cinnamon toast grab you?” Tony suggested, instead.
“That would be cool,” Peter agreed.
He waited a moment until he was sure Tony was actually moving in the general direction of the toaster, then sat down next to Steve, and bent an elbow on the table.
“So, Steve, um... what are we doing tonight?”
“Luke heard about a smuggling ring on the East docks we should look into. We’re meeting at seven on the pier where you fought Doc Ock last summer.”
“-The new one,” Peter nodded, “-right.”
“I’m going to be out of the shop most of the day,” Steve added, reaching for his coffee cup.
“Oh yeah, you’ve got that new Avenger induction ceremony... How did War Machine get picked for that, anyway?” Peter asked curiously, beginning to peel and eat the banana he’d grabbed earlier.
“Why because he’s a superhero of course,” Tony cut in, cheerfully sarcastic, “-dont’cha read the papers?”
“He helped us against the Mandarin’s henchmen last week,” Steve answered Peter, “-he also stopped Attuma’s forces when they tried to sneak into the Atlantic through the Panama Canal, and he backed up Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch when the Lava-men had them pinned down on 48th st.-”
“-Was that before, or after Morgan started using the Maria Stark foundation to repair the damage to the city from super-powered battles?” Tony interrupted, punctuating his point with a used butter knife.
“Both, I think,” Steve said after a pause, “-but that had nothing to do with how I voted on War Machine, and you know it.”
Tony sighed, and lapsed into unhappy silence.
“The Maria Stark...” Peter paused, “-wait, isn’t- -you’re related to Morgan Stark? That Morgan Stark?”
“Distantly. Very, very distantly,” Tony ground out.
“First cousins on his father’s side,” Steve translated.
Tony flicked a small glob of butter off the knife-blade at him.
“O-kay, that’s... wow,” Peter acknowledged, grimly.
“I’m not concerned with Morgan Stark,” Steve put in, licking the dollop of butter off the back of his left hand, “-War Machine is the one I have to work with, he’s shown himself to be A-okay so far. He’s rough around the edges, but with a boss like that I’ll bet he has to be. ...He reminds me a lot of you actually,” Steve added, looking at Tony’s back.
“He’s -supposed- to, he’s wearing MY ARMOR,” Tony pointed out.
“He thinks Morgan invented it,” said Steve.
“I’m sure he does,” Tony snorted.
He put a large plate of toast and a dish of oddly tan-looking (sugar/cinnamon) butter in the center of the table. Tony took a piece of toast for himself, and held it in his mouth by one corner while he went back for plates.
Peter pointed to a piece of toast on the top of the pile.
“It’s not just me, is it? There’s a spider-web toast-stamp on this.”
“You’re welcome,” Tony smirked.
“You have way too much time on your hands,” Peter observed.
Tony put the plates down, and took back the plate of toast. Steve discreetly used his longer reach to snag a piece anyway.
“...Though it does look pretty cool, and um- -thanks for thinking of me?” Peter amended, smiling winningly.
The toast was returned. Tony poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot Steve had been drinking, and joined them at the breakfast table.
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 2:26 AM.
Tony sliced a sharp metal edge off of the faceplate of his new helmet, and held it up to the light, gleaming gray. The shapes came easily to him now, so different from the first time, or even from when he’d cut the Mark II out of an old red classic car body without altering the angles of some of the fairings...
God, that thing had sucked power. -He’d spent as much time skating as he had flying.
The scratch-built Mark III had been the first suit that was really as dangerous to his enemies as it was to himself, and he still had it in storage, repaired and re-sealed after his near-disastrous battle with the Black Knight over an airship moored above the East River.
With the Mark IV, he’d finally gotten the internal shock-absorption and padding system figured out, which meant he no longer had to live in a fading tattoo of mechanically-shaped bruises, or keep quite so many ice packs in the freezer of the downstairs fridge. When he’d crossed paths with the Hulk two months later, that upgrade had certainly saved his life...
The Mark V had been in some ways a stylistic throwback to the Mark II, but he’d returned to the hinged plate rather than telescoping design to allow for the use of a hollow-ceramic microbead alloy that could take almost any punishment as long as it wasn’t chafed or rasped, and thus needed to be encased in an inner and outer layer of metal.
...Or in the case of the Mark VI, an outer layer of cryogenically-tempered metal, and a far lighter inner coating of Teflon...
His current Mark VII armor had included a lot of aerodynamics and articulation improvements, as well as dabbling with solar power for extended flight range.
Steve had said that one looked ‘snappy’.
The Mark VIII would have many of the improvements of its predecessors, but one or two would be conspicuously absent, and certain plates in the arms and shoulders had been subtly thickened and contoured around an entirely new weapon, almost brutal in its simplicity...
Unlike every suit of armor Tony had built since the fateful Mark I, the Mark VIII was designed to take down one specific opponent.
Hopefully Steve was right about him, but if not... Tony would be ready.
-
The Theatre District, 9:20 PM.
Harry ran.
He didn’t know what was happening behind him, except that it was a superhero battle and many things were blowing up, and Peter had gone back to help someone. Part of Harry cringed at that thought, but he had Mary Jane running beside him, red hair loose, the square heels of her shoes loud on the concrete, and she changed everything.
Peter wouldn’t want Harry to come back, until he could be sure MJ was safe.
Harry ran, and felt like a coward anyway.
Finally the explosions sounded more faintly, and the streets were unnaturally empty of traffic. -New Yorkers drove with their radios on for a reason, and they could vanish like cockroaches at the flick of a light switch if a battle advisory was called.
Harry and MJ ducked into an alley to catch their breath, still shaken.
“Are- -you okay?” Harry asked, hand on the brick wall beside him.
“-Yes,” MJ nodded. “Harry- -Peter...”
“I know- -I’m going back for him,” Harry assured her.
“Spider-Man is there-” MJ began. “Do you think he-?"
“I saw him web you out of the way just before that marquee fell,” Harry nodded, “-I swear I think I my heart stopped-
-Spider-Man’s busy with that guy on the glider though...”
MJ’s face wavered as she looked at him, torn but resolute. Tonight she risked losing both of them, but Harry was right, he couldn’t leave Peter. They couldn’t leave Peter.
If she begged him to, Harry would probably stay here with her, safe. She knew what buttons to push. If she did that and Peter died though, it would destroy Harry from the inside out. Harry had to go, and she had to stay here. MJ had faced this reality before, and she still wasn’t sure who was getting the better end of the deal.
For now though-
“Harry?
“Yes?
“Don’t be a hero,” she kissed him then, hands cupping his face, and rising slightly on tiptoe to meet him at eye level. “-Just
go get Peter.”
Harry paused for a moment, lips parted. Then he nodded quickly, and headed back the way they had come.
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 2:41 PM.
“Yep,” Tony said, inspecting the fragment of circuit board still attached to the handful of wires on his desk, “-this is definitely Ostech.”
“But how would the Green Goblin get ahold of a SHIELD glider in the first place?” Peter wanted to know.
“Well that’s the question, isn’t it...?” Tony agreed, setting his jeweler’s glass down on the desk and leaning back in his chair a little.
“Hmm...” Peter frowned, chin in hand.
Tony reached over and pressed Peter’s forehead with two fingers.
Peter swung back and forth on his webline like an irritated pendulum. He favored Tony with a dubious look, then put out his hand upside-down to the corner of the desk, and stopped himself.
“Pre- existing technology can be bought, copied, given, or stolen,” Tony reviewed, “-and there’s no way the Goblin’s glider was built by an amateur. -This soldering’s too clean. Either Norman’s been dealing under the table, or the Goblin stole something and SHIELD either doesn’t know yet or has decided to cover it up. And that last one wouldn’t surprise me. Nick hates looking like he can’t control his own weapons...”
“-Even when it’s true,” Peter observed, folding his arms.
“Especially when it’s true,” Tony nodded.
He turned around and rummaged in one of the middle drawers of the tall tan filing cabinet, coming up with what appeared to be the manual for a commercial air conditioning unit circa 1964.
When he pressed a small metal stud on the side of his desk-lamp though, the desk light switched to a dim, pale-violet color, and a cleanly-drawn circuit diagram appeared on the yellowed pages of the manual in thin lines of luminescent blue.
“Now what you grabbed was here,” Tony began, flipping a few pages forwards and pointing to a newly-revealed diagram labeled ‘fuel system’. “-These four white wires connect the fuel injection system to the throttle module over here, and the black one’s there for timing control. This little white one with the red collar’s just there to record engine time, so that wasn’t important.”
“And since this fuel flow valve defaults to ‘full open’ when there’s no current,” Peter said, pointing awkwardly around Tony’s hand to the appropriate place on the diagram, “-it basically flooded his engine.”
“Exactly. That’s why he started trailing half-burned fuel and losing altitude so fast. The fuel mixture was spraying all over his igniter array, and vaporizing more than it was actually combusting, so he couldn’t get good compression.”
“Yeah, I get it. Um... Tony?”
“Yes?” Tony looked up.
“Why do you have the plans to the SHIELD glider? I mean... that is illegal, right?”
Tony sighed.
“Peter, no knowledge is actually -bad-, it’s just in how people use it. I don’t use other people’s designs without permission unless I absolutely have to, but obviously it’s still a good idea to understand the technology that’s out there,” Tony explained, reasonably. “-There’s nothing illegal in knowledge.”
“But SHIELD could still totally arrest you for having these plans, right?” Peter pressed.
“Uh... yes. But they would make the arrest on the assumption that I was planning to build or sabotage one.”
“Don’t um, get sent to jail okay?” Peter suggested, helpfully.
“I’m doing my best, Spider,” Tony assured him, slightly touched but mostly just annoyed by the remark.
“Tony?” Peter began, hesitantly.
“Yes?” Tony answered, testily.
“You’re... good at keeping secrets, right?”
“...Why?”
“When do you- -not keep secrets?” Peter asked, vaguely.
“Peter...” Tony paused, stood up, and rubbed his own forehead, “-sit down, will you?”
Peter chose a high, swivel-topped stool from in front of Tony’s workbench, dragged it over, and perched on it.
Tony put the plans back in the filing cabinet, and thought for a moment.
The webwork on the ceiling above Peter- (that, come hell or high water the boy would have cleaned off before the garage opened tomorrow) -looked rough. Half-assed and compulsively repaired, with only four original frame-threads crisscrossing in the center to create a base-eight web, and a slight unevenness in the squaring of the spiral.
Tony chose a beer and a Coke out of the refrigerator, and handed the Coke to Peter. He sat back in his desk chair, and crossed his boots on the desk beside the phone book.
“All right, run that by me again?” Tony waved a hand at him in a ‘roll tape’ motion.
Peter fidgeted with his Coke, but as always, was too polite to bolt before he finished it.
“I... I’ve always gone on the theory that the less my friends and family, you know, the civilian ones, knew about my caped crusades, the safer they would be, but um... it doesn’t always work out that way.”
“What happened?” Tony asked, quickly.
“Nothing! I mean... nobody was hurt this time...” Peter passed the bottle from his left hand to his right, but still didn’t drink.
“So... what almost happened?” Tony asked, relaxing a bit.
“Harry came back to rescue me when I fought the Green Goblin downtown the other night. I mean, he didn’t know I was Spider-Man, he was just looking for Peter Parker, and since I was in costume at the time, of course he couldn’t find me, and uh... Tony, he could have died. I mean... easily.”
“Hrmm...” Tony nodded gravely, and took a pull on his beer.
“And Mary Jane- -thank god Harry had the sense to get her to safety first, but she was worried about me too, and... You know how my enemies love grabbing her... What if it’s just her and me next time? Or if Harry-” Peter broke off, and sighed.
“You’re right, that’s a problem,” Tony agreed.
“So what do I do?” Peter demanded, “-if I tell them I’m Spider-Man, my enemies will have that much more reason to kidnap them, and if I don’t Harry’ll keep putting himself in danger for me every time I have to pull a quick-change...”
“There is no right answer, Peter,” Tony admitted with a sigh, “-it’s a percentages game. I’ve held a good man while he -died- from bullets he got protecting my identity as Iron Man.”
“Yinsen.”
“Yeah. But I’ve also had people try and blackmail me, get close to me to steal my designs, wait to attack me until I was out of costume, attack whoever I was dating out of costume... I was seeing this court stenographer once. Lovely black girl with plum-colored lipstick before it really caught on, and these eyes... she wore glasses with cats-eye frames, but they just kinda emphasized it... we met while Matt was putting the Rhino away the second time...” Tony held up two fingers.
Peter kept his silence.
“Well... anyway, the Exeter thought he was going to be implicated, found out who I was, and ah... not knowing who I was didn’t protect Carmen.”
“Ouch,” Peter acknowledged, quietly.
“Yeah...” Tony didn’t elaborate.
He didn’t elaborate on what he had done -afterwards-, either. Peter would have been in eighth grade at the time, and the sickening fear of that high-speed chase though the oncoming the traffic inside the Holland tunnel wasn’t something Tony wanted to describe out loud even to a college freshman.
...Even aside from the nauseating crunch of the British villain’s bones and jetpack slamming together into the cooling unit of a cab-over semi-truck at a combined velocity of over 120 miles per hour...
No. Peter didn’t need to hear that part.
Tony took a breath.
“It’s a guessing game, Peter. It’s a horrible, unfair, and -deadly- crapshoot. You just... think of all the logical contributing factors you can, think about the personalities involved, and who they are really and... You wing it. And then you fucking pray.”
Tony took another pull on his beer.
“...Ah,” Peter swallowed, and did the same with his Coke.
“Chin up, Spider. You’re still alive, aren’t you?” Tony pointed out.
“-It’s a lot easier to tell someone who you are when you’ve both got powers, isn’t it?” Peter said, shrewdly.
Tony smiled at him.
-
Tony’s bedroom, 10:40 PM.
“Steve...?” Tony began, both palms flat against Steve’s chest.
“Yeah?” Steve asked, glancing up at him.
“I was wondering something...”
“Shoot,” Steve smiled.
“Can I do something to your shield?” Tony asked, looking slightly mischievous.
“It’s not a target, Tony,” Steve replied, shortly.
“Actually, that wasn’t what I had in mind. ...But that means people have asked you if they could use your shield for obscene target practice before, doesn’t it?”
“...I don’t want to talk about it,” Steve sighed.
“Well, it’d be easier to clean than armor,” Tony reflected, philosophically.
“But it’s still ME-!” Steve blurted out. “-I mean... not literally, but it... have you ever been hit with small rocks, fruit, eggs-?”
“I got egged in my armor once,” Tony nodded.
“Well that’s how it would feel. Like it was my face they were hitting instead of my shield. ...I just don’t like the idea, even in fun,” Steve explained, frowning.
“I will not intentionally come on your shield,” Tony promised, and kissed him on the nose.
...Though it went without saying that by resting as close to the bed as it did, the shield took its chances.
“...What did you want with my shield, then?” Steve asked, cautiously optimistic.
“I wanted to lay on it,” Tony replied, “-on my back.”
“Oh. Well, that would be all right,” Steve agreed, with a relieved smile. He patted Tony’s hip one-handed. “-Scoot.”
Tony grinned, and slid off of Steve to the side, letting him up.
Steve stretched off the bed in a way that had to be illegal somewhere, and retrieved his shield from its place against the bedside table.
Tony watched both man and shield return to the bed with close attention.
Steve paused, glancing over at Tony’s face just one more time to be sure he wasn’t letting his shield in for anything nasty. Tony looked reasonably trustworthy, if just a little... keen on the whole thing.
Steve set his shield down on the sheets, star up.
Tony glanced at Steve with a lopsided smile of secret delight, and ran his hand over the shield’s barely-textured surface, like an Egyptologist brushing the sand from a row of inscribed hieroglyphics.
Then he sat with his back to it, bottom not quite -on- the shield, and slowly, slowly leaned back.
“Ah-!” The metal was cool, not exactly cold, and it adhered slightly to the faint sheen of nervous sweat along the crease of Tony’s spine. The metal warmed quickly against his skin.
Damn this thing must be conductive, Tony thought, with a faint shiver.
“It is,” Steve told him, evenly.
Tony blinked, not realizing he’d spoken aloud, then shut his eyes as he felt Steve’s fingers gently cupping the back of his neck, lowering him down the rest of the way. Tony’s back popped twice, and he groaned softly.
“...I knew it,” he sighed happily, eyes still closed, “-it’s just the right angle...”
Steve laughed, and ran his hand along Tony’s chest and side, feeling the ways the addition of the shield had opened the familiar angles.
...How would these contours shift if Tony lay over the shield on his side? Or forwards- -but then the shield would put too much pressure on Tony’s arc reactor... unless the shield was moved down... which would, Steve thought with a covert blush, look far too much like an invitation. And... The same would be true if Tony sat on the shield and lay down as he was now from that position, come to think of it...
Steve felt vaguely uneasy, and... Very, very turned on.
Tony was still smiling sleepily, and watching him from between not-quite-closed dark eyelashes.
“-You planned this,” Steve realized.
“...Can I help it if your brain is a physical probability engine?” Tony grinned, stretching his arms up above his head and arching his back against the shield a little.
“Get up,” Steve ordered.
Tony paused, frowning, and looked up to see if the blonde was serious.
Steve was.
Tony sighed disappointedly, sat up, and rubbed the back of his neck.
“Sit up on your knees in the middle of the bed, and close your eyes,” Steve instructed.
Tony’s eyes flicked to Steve’s face with intense curiosity, then closed. He knelt in the indicated spot, and waited. Steve had his shield in hand now, Tony could hear it the by the soft squeak of the brown leather arm-straps.
Why brown leather? Tony wondered suddenly. Why brown straps, when everything else leather on Steve’s costume had been dyed red, white or blue?
Steve’s hand touched his wrist, and Tony could feel the other man’s breath whisper against the back of his neck. Tony’s unspoken question was lost.
“If you want to play with this shield,” Steve began quietly, “-you have to understand what it is first.”
He guided the fingers of Tony’s right hand around one of the arm straps, and closed them. The leather was thick, two identical plies of cowhide machine-stitched together, worn smooth in places from daily use, and heavy as a damned -horse- collar in Tony’s hand...
Tony swallowed, quietly.
“You have to understand what it’s a part of, and I don’t just mean me,” Steve said calmly, raising Tony’s arms up by the wrists.
“All right...?” Tony managed, a little breathlessly.
“You have to know that it’s an unrepeatable experiment,” Steve continued, the corner of his cleft chin -just- scratching the back of Tony’s neck down near his shoulders. “-And that there’s not another like it in the world. If something happens to this shield... ...it can never be replaced.”
“Okay...” Tony breathed, steadying a little.
Steve began fitting Tony’s hands through the arm straps above his head.
“...You have to know where it’s been. You have to understand that it’s saved my life. You have to know that men have seen this shield when they thought they were utterly defeated, and the sight of it kept them fighting...”
Steve slid the shield down to the level of Tony’s elbows, effectively trapping him.
“You have to know that I’ve condoned its use for a pillow, a lunch-table, an umbrella, an operating table, and a children’s sled...”
The straps slid lower, almost to the level of Tony’s shoulders...
“You have to know that I’ve cleaned blood-spatters off it, and paint, and vanilla ice cream, and tiny smears of lead from bullets, and some stuff from the floor of a barn that I’d rather not discuss...”
Lower, and Tony felt the smooth, hard edge of the metal resting against the base of his neck, and against the muscles at the small of his back.
“And most of all, you have to know what it feels like... on,” Steve finished, and put his hands on Tony’s shoulders. Then softly, “-put your arms down.”
Tony folded his arms down loosely at his sides, and felt the full weight of the shield settle squarely across his shoulders for the first time.
It felt... Tony couldn’t put it into words, but he thought first of ‘the soul of the sword’, the legend that a samurai’s will had to be stronger than that of his sword, or the sword would wield -him-.
He thought next of the air show at which he’d first seen the Thunderbirds, and the way the mighty roar of the F-84F Thunderstreaks’ jet engines had drowned out the music of the band, the shimmer of the sun on hot black tarmac, the scent of freshly-made caramel-popcorn... leaving only the feel of the wind against his face.
He thought of the strange, not-quite-acknowledged sensation he sometimes got while plugged into the city’s power grid, that supralogical instinct that he was now part of a gestalt electrical nervous system far greater than the one in his body alone...
Tony felt the steadying weight of Steve’s big hands around his shoulders...
...And breathed.
“Open your eyes,” Steve smiled, against the back of Tony’s hair.
Tony did so, and blinked a little.
“How does it feel?” Steve asked.
“It’s... heavy,” Tony replied, sounding surprised.
“Its ten and a half pounds, without the straps,” Steve countered, not quite laughing against his ear.
“Ah... well, it feels heavy...” Tony fumbled, “-are you leaning on it?” He frowned.
“No,” Steve laughed.
“Maybe the Vibranium’s capable of preserving some kind of wave-harmonic record...” Tony said thoughtfully, not sounding half as coherent as he thought he did.
“You mean what if my shield remembers where it’s been?” Steve translated, easily.
“Well, obviously it doesn’t have those kinds of conscious connections, but with the little-understood kinetic absorption properties of Vibranium, it might well contain some kind of static after-image, like a- -like the way light and shadow come up on photographic paper, only with a different part of the energy spectrum,” Tony explained, defensively.
“Could be,” Steve agreed carefully, and pressed a kiss against the side of Tony’s neck.
“Cap-?” Tony began, sounding a little breathless.
“Yes?” Steve murmured.
“A- -are you trying to record something?”
“Are you still up for it?” Steve asked, not pressuring him.
“Are you kidding?” Tony demanded, looking back over his shoulder with a slightly wild light in his eyes.
“So that’s a yes?” Steve grinned, folding his arms around Tony’s chest, shield and all.
“Definitely- -ohhh, I can feel your body heat through it...” Tony sighed, closing his eyes.
“Do you want to keep it on?” Steve asked.
“Actually... no,” Tony admitted, drawing back a little, “-the shield is, ah... yours. And besides, the lower edge of the metal is really digging into my back here...”
“It does that,” Steve nodded wryly.
Tony shrugged out of the shoulder straps on his second try, and Steve guided the shield the rest of the way down off of his arms. He set the shield aside, and gathered Tony back against his chest, skin to skin.
“Mmmm... this feels better without metal in the way,” Steve smiled against Tony’s shoulder.
“I could make a case f’r either one,” Tony sighed, leaning back happily.
“How about we try cracking your back again?” Steve suggested, not quite innocently.
“-I like the way you think,” Tony decided, with a piratical grin.
Steve let him go, and Tony spread himself back over the hard, smooth curve of the shield. There were slight breaks in texture between the different colors of the shield’s stars-and-stripes design, but the skin on his back wouldn’t be sensitive enough to- -oh goddamn, he could feel the imprint... of the star, at least...
Steve ran both hands up along Tony’s chest, thumbs dividing around the casing of the arc reactor and smoothly rubbing around the skin at its base. Tony caught his breath suddenly, and grabbed Steve’s shoulders, eyes open.
Steve’s fingers curled around Tony’s collarbone, then slid back down his entire torso along the same path, and traced up the backs of his thighs.
“Hnn...” Tony whimpered, kneading Steve’s shoulders encouragingly.
“Heheh...” Steve leaned in, and nuzzled the base of Tony’s ribcage. This close to the reactor’s power sockets, he could feel the faintest brush of a static charge against the outer edge of his hair...
“Steve-” Tony’s fingers found the back of Steve’s head, and-
The phone rang.
Not the regular phone either, but the black one just under the edge of the bed beside Tony’s emergency backup battery.
Steve groaned, and pressed his face against Tony’s abs in denial.
“God... dammit-!” Tony swore, squeezing his eyes shut momentarily.
Steve sighed, and let him up.
Tony rolled off the shield, and thrust his hand down off the edge of the bed with a bestial snarl.
“YES?” He answered, through gritted teeth.
Pause.
“Uh-huh.”
Pause.
“Moleman- -why...?” Tony whined, raking his wavy black bangs out of his eyes with one hand.
Pause.
“All right, all right... -fuck-...”
Pause.
“-Up yours, Luke!” Tony yelled back, and slammed the receiver down hard.
Steve sighed again, and reached for his pants.
"You know Steve, I feel like doing some real violence out there today..." Tony vented, fishing a pair of boxer shorts out of his top dresser drawer.
“Well, the sooner we get this done...” Steve began, philosophically.
-
Tony’s kitchen, 6:20 AM.
Peter poured himself a glass of milk by the blinding light of the refrigerator, and slumped into one of the seats at the kitchen table. He pulled off his mask, and drank.
Ten minutes later, Tony wandered out scratching the side of his jaw. He turned on the light, and started.
“Hi Tony,” Peter greeted him, miserably.
Tony frowned at him for a moment. There didn’t seem to be any signs of visible injury or madness, so he patted Peter’s shoulder, and wandered past him towards the coffee-maker.
“What’cha doing sitting in the dark, Spider?” Tony asked, spooning ground coffee into the filter.
“I got here early, and I didn’t want to wake you,” Peter shrugged.
“Smart boy,” Tony muttered. He filled the carafe with water from the tap, and poured it in.
“I told Harry,” Peter said, studying a scratch on the worn white paint of the tabletop.
Tony glanced back at him. He replaced the carafe, and pressed the ‘on’ switch.
“Like that, is it?” He asked, turning.
“I... don’t really know yet,” Peter admitted, in a voice that sounded dangerously close to cracking. “I told him, and... at first he was just shocked, you know? And then he was like, ‘that’s cool, man,’ and... Then I went over how that was why I kept disappearing, and why I never said anything to MJ, and- -then he got upset and said I shouldn’t have treated him like a child, and I said-” Peter broke off, and sighed. He ran a hand back through his damp, mask-flattened hair. “Well... Harry spent the night at his dad’s house.”
“That’s not good,” Tony agreed, remembering Peter’s friend’s eagerness to please and talkative nature.
“Do you think Mr. Osborne would-?”
“Norman Osborne can kiss my ass,” Tony said bluntly, “-if he tries to blackmail you with your secret identity, we’ve got the wiring you ripped out of the Goblin Glider with part of an Ostech circuit board attached, and it’s all hearsay at this point anyway. -Keep an extra careful eye out for being tailed for the next month or so, though.”
Peter nodded, and drank some of his milk.
“Have you seen that guy in black on the hover board again?” Tony asked, getting up and starting a round of pancakes.
“No, not since last Friday. I didn’t follow him then because I had Harry with me, and it’s not like this guy’s done anything, that I know of... Between us, I don’t think I would have caught him anyway. He was there and gone in a moment, like this shadow racing across the moon...”
-
Outside the Iron Horse Garage, 8:43 AM (same day).
Harry waited uneasily, leaning against the hood of his car.
It was already too hot for the jacket he held folded over his arm, but that jacket, like the pastel button-down shirt he was wearing, had been chosen for going out the night before, not for the harsh light of a New York morning. He should have been in class almost an hour ago. Harry had driven for a long time the night before, driven until his eyes were dry again, and when he stopped in the parking lot of a harbor overlook, the yellow-white glare of the streetlights no longer spread in his vision like Christmas ornaments.
He was part of a larger world now, and Harry knew without a shadow of a doubt, that he didn’t want any part of it.
But he did owe Peter an apology. Superhero or not, Peter was still... Peter and his friend had only revealed his masked identity in the first place in an attempt to keep him safe. It was such a Peter thing to do, in such a deeply fucked-up, innocent, and twisted way...
Would this have made a difference?
Would knowing that the only reason Peter had never asked out MJ was because he was a masked superhero of all things really stopped Harry from dating her?
Well probably, but it would hardly be fair to break up with her now, and besides... Harry didn’t want to.
Were he and MJ really such a bad thing?
God, as if he hadn’t been living in Peter Parker’s shadow enough...
A superhero.
Spider-Man no less, Iron Man’s partner, one of the very institutions of New York City...
Yet still Peter, still naive enough to miss what was going on right under his nose, still as much of a target as he had been in high school, but now hunted by far stronger, far deadlier bullies, men with powers of their own, from whom Harry could no longer protect him.
He was useless. Again. Right when he could no longer afford to be.
...And what if- -what if the Goblin learned who Peter was, and came after MJ?
Questions pounded in his Harry’s skull like the headache behind his eyes. He checked his watch again, but it didn’t make the garage door open.
He sighed, got back in his car, and turned on the radio.
‘--black curtains near the station.
Blackroof country, no gold pavements, tired starlings.
Silver horses ran down moonbeams in your dark eyes.
Dawnlight smiles on you leaving, my contentment.
I'll wait in this place where the sun never shines...
Wait in this place where the shadows run from themselves-’
Darkly appropriate, ironic, and more than a little weird.
...Harry had the feeling a lot of things were going to be like that now.
-
The Iron Horse Garage, 4:35 PM.
‘--You get the picture? (yes, we see)
That's when I fell for (the leader of the pack)
My folks were always putting him down (down, down)
They said he came from the wrong side of town-
(whatcha mean when ya say that he came from the wrong side of town?)
They told me he was bad-’
“No, next week,” Tony said loudly, “-I told you last Tuesday I couldn’t fit you in before the- -hangonnasecond...” Tony covered the mouthpiece of the receiver with one hand, and glared at the covey of teenagers clustered around the jukebox. “OFF,” he ordered, pointedly.
Harry and MJ began a sudden and frantic discussion over how to accomplish this, on a jukebox that was already playing.
‘-But I knew he was sad
That's why I fell for (the le-’
Peter opened his mouth as if to join in, closed it, then reached down and unplugged the thick black cord at the back. The song died in mid-syllable. Tony gave Peter a thumbs-up, and uncovered the mouthpiece.
“Hey, you still there?” He began again.
Pause.
“-Yeah, after the fifteenth.” Tony picked up a pencil and started writing out a list on a piece of scrap paper.
Pause.
“Could you do Wednesday?”
Pause.
“Yeah, all right.”
Pause.
“No, no, just put ‘em all in a bag, and bring ‘em in.”
Pause.
“Okay, see you then. Bye,” Tony hung up. “YOU. Teenagers with a car...” He beckoned.
“Me?” Harry asked, walking over towards the desk.
“No, all of you. Take this list, and run down to the ‘Pho Tigers Garden’. It’s that place on- -Peter, you know.”
“Gotcha, boss,” Peter nodded.
“I can’t read Vietnamese,” Harry objected, frowning at the list.
“Never mind, just give this note to Khan when you get there,” Tony assured him.
“-Money?” Peter reminded Tony, guilelessly.
“Oh, right,” Tony handed Harry a twenty, and the three of them left.
Tony looked around the now -quieter- garage with satisfaction.
Blonde hair shining gold in the natural lighting up near the entrance, Steve was talking with The Falcon (Sam Wilson, since they were both out of costume) and sketching one of the garage’s more permanent customers. He was an easygoing older man with slicked back steel-gray hair, a well-worn black leather vest, and a pair of brown-lensed aviator shades. ...How Steve had talked the man into sitting for him Tony wasn’t sure, but he found himself smiling anyway.
Tony advanced on the jukebox, and plugged it back in. He and pressed ‘COINS’, ‘0’, and ‘PLAY’ together. The jukebox unselected ‘Leader of the Pack’, and obediently went back into standby mode.
“You guys wanna hear something new?” Tony called over his shoulder.
“Yeah,” Sam agreed.
“Sure, why not?” The old man shrugged, turning as he answered and messing up Steve’s drawing perspective once and for all.
“-It’s not by that singer who calls himself ‘Alice’, is it?” Steve asked, warily.
“No, no, this is somebody else,” Tony promised, pressing ‘A-10’, then ‘PLAY’.
A layered guitar score started, then a slow backbeat with a snare drum in there somewhere...
‘Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Weird and Gilly
The spiders from Mars. He played it left hand
But made it too far
Became the special man, then we were Ziggy's band
Ziggy really sang, screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo
Like some cat from Japan-’
Sam looked nonplussed, and folded his arms.
Steve exchanged a glance of complete understanding with the old man, who got up and patted Steve’s shoulder as he gathered his helmet to leave.
“-Good luck there, son.”
---
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I like how you connected the music to the story.
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And poor Carol, do the Avengers know about Steve and Tony, or was she worried she offended Captain America?
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As for Carol and Wanda... Steve's very low-key, as far as being out or not. He's a below-the-radar kind of guy, unless you ask him a direct question, and then he gives you and honest answer. If Carol didn't suspect he had something going on with Tony (and/or Iron Man?) before now, I'm thinking that him being okay with her and Wanda may raise the question in Carol's mind.
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I am exorcising a particularly cracktacular plot bunny elsewhere this week, but I have every intention of coming back to this story when I'm finished there.
Seriously. Cannibal space slugs. The twain must NOT meet.