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cap_ironman2010-02-05 11:41 am
otherhazards.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2010-02-05 11:41 am
Entry tags:
Fic:Knights of the Breakfast Table (Chapter 5)
Title: Knights of the Breakfast Table, Chapter 5 (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: Sex, graphic superhero violence, and creepy insects.
Pairing/Characters: Steve/Tony, Carol/Wanda implied. (Co-starring Peter Parker, Harry Osborne, War Machine, Hank Pym, and Luke Cage.)
Summary: Scorched earth.
===========================================================
Tony’s kitchen, 7:33 AM.
Steve studied the slightly blurred green and purple image on the front page of the newspaper in front of him. The amateurish photo had been taken from below and at a distance, and it captured the collateral damage of the Goblin’s rampage far better than it showed the Goblin himself. Steve searched for any flaw, any pattern or familiarity from the past in this new menace...
Nothing really came to him.
The Goblin’s glider didn’t look like it would hold up well against a blow from his shield, but there was something else to see here...
The faces of a few fleeing bystanders in the lower right-hand side of the picture caught Steve’s eye. They were terrified.
The Green Goblin was, (insanity aside) just one man with what amounted to a bag of grenades and a standard-issue SHIELD glider... wasn’t he?
-
The Iron Horse Garage, upstairs bathroom, 8:40 PM.
Tony shut the shower off, and stepped out dripping. He toweled himself mostly dry, then wiped down the wrist-seal of the latex glove covering the front of his arc reactor carefully, and pulled it off with a snap. Tony raised a hand to wipe the mirror so he could see to shave, and- -stopped.
A smile spread quietly across his face.
Tony moved his hand to the right, and wiped the condensation off a section of mirror that didn’t have Steve’s finger-traced palm tree sketched on it.
-
Downtown NYC, 10:48 PM.
The wind was rising.
Tony fired his bootjets and took off straight into it, tracking the signal from Peter’s Spider-comm. in his peripheral vision. The kid could outrun a police cruiser when he really got swinging, and the next fire wasn’t far away.
It was a multi-level nightclub, tall lines of sputtering neon wavering in the heat of the blaze within. The lower levels of the building were already gone, a glowing inferno through the open front double doors facing onto the street. The shaken crowd outside had had the sense to fall back more at that point, and they cowered like a gold and polyester rainbow on the far side of the hastily erected police barricades.
“Zip lines!” Tony ordered without looking up, and landed as close to the doors as he could get without getting sucked in.
Boots firmly on the ground and hand-repulsors braced magnetically against the structural steel of the building to withstand the indraft, Tony walked the rest of the way, and took hold of both door handles. He yanked them shut with a sudden hard wrench, and flipped the polarity of his left hand-repulsor, holding the heavy metal security doors shut while he welded them together with the laser on his right-hand glove. It was quick, and dirty, and effective. With half its air cut off, the flames on the top floors slackened, but the respite wouldn’t last...
A shadow in the smoky night sky above, Peter was swinging back and forth between the roof of the club and the roof of a high-rise across the street, bringing people across with him. The fire department had one engine trained on the club itself, and another hosing the nearby buildings for the inevitable collapse. Fat drops spattered and hissed across the hot metal of Tony’s faceplate as he drew back from the sealed double-doors. The cops had taken charge of the two long, thickly-spun weblines Peter had left from the corners of the building to the ground. The braver and more desperate of the trapped people above were wrapping their jackets or shirts around the line and sliding down the long curve to the ground that way. The zip lines were a calculated risk, dangerous as hell to use with a mob of untrained civilians up there, but with the roof tar melting under them, there really hadn’t been any choice.
Tony took to the air again, saw a girl fall off the nearer line, and stopped himself from catching her in a suit hot enough to peel off skin -just- in time. Tony whipped a quick loop upwards, flew down through the cold stream of one of the fire hoses, and caught the girl with barely ten feet to spare. He had, he judged, about three seconds before the reflexive fear-of-falling grip gave way to the ow-hot-metal letting go, but that was more than enough time to speed-brake and drop his charge off into the arms of a waiting fireman.
The two looked at each other, momentarily stunned.
The fireman because the girl was -very- pretty, and since she’d used her dress to protect her hands from the spider-web zip line, she was now in nothing but her underwear and one red high-heeled shoe...
The girl because she was happy to still be alive, probably.
It was a moment, one of hundreds Tony had seen through iron eyeslits over the years. They were there- -and gone- -and if he could remember them at the right times later, it was moments like that that kept him from going mad.
The entire thought took point two seconds and then Tony was gone again, airborne...
Iron Man stood in the rain of an open fire hydrant, boots apart on the wet concrete, arms held slightly up away from his sides. He tipped his face up, eyes shut, and let the water rinse the caked ash off his clear (now slightly warped) Plexiglas eye shields. There were muffled voices all around him, but for the moment all the fires were out, and the whirr of his suit’s internal cooling fans was the sweetest sound on Earth.
Tony had the emergency/police band frequency crackling rapid-fire information in his right ear, and only smooth static in his left, the channel kept open for Peter.
Information. Water. Rotatory-
Wait... WHAT? Why were they talking about his-?
Tony’s eyes snapped open.
“SPIDER,” he barked, keying his helmet radio.
“Did you just hear what I-?!” Peter began, almost squelching out the channel.
“Where are you?” Tony demanded, shortly.
“The roof across the street,” Peter replied.
“Stand by for pickup,” Tony ordered, and blasted up out of the hydrant-spray, shattering the water into a spreading nimbus lit from within.
-
Near the Iron Horse Garage, 12:07 AM (same night).
The fire could be seen for miles. It wasn’t big, but -damn- it was bright, cooking off white-hot in the center of a block the first explosion had plunged into darkness.
White-hot... that had to be the magnesium alloy wheels stored in the broom closet upstairs, Tony thought, detaching Peter into a side-street two blocks out. Peter cut his momentum by webbing off a lamppost, and vanished into shadow. Then he was just a silent red dot, shifting up and down Tony’s right-side tracking indicator lights as he swung between buildings.
Tony’s eyes focused forwards as he flew, actually squinting a little against the glare of the metal-fire, isolated in the darkness.
He wasn’t alone up here.
The ballsy son of a bitch had actually... stayed.
Tony slammed into War Machine at a speed most light aircraft couldn’t match, fists-first.
They plowed through the top quarter of a telephone pole without pausing, and dug a shallow, thirty-foot gouge in the asphalt of the street beyond before pulverizing the far curb.
War Machine took the brunt of the impact, as Tony had meant for him to.
The heavy, silver-gray armor was bigger than Tony’s, slower. At eight and a half feet tall though, the War Machine was by far the smallest and best designed of the ‘knockoff’ suits. Tony wasn’t sure -what- its power source was yet, but he was really looking forward to tearing it apart for a look-see...
War Machine kneed him. The impact came hard, striking the back plates of Tony’s armor with a tooth-jarring clang, and driving him forwards.
Huge steel hands closed around Tony’s helmet, tightening with a deafening screech of grinding metal that drowned out the sound of both Tony’s radios... then silenced them with a crunch and held him, pinned.
Tony fired both hand-repulsors, aiming for the joints of War Machine’s otherwise thick shoulder-armor, and broke loose. He hovered twelve feet up and rained down electromagnetic hell, burst after burst at close range, -hammering- the other suit apart with a ferocity that-
-Shit-
Tony darted out of line with War Machine’s chestplate just before the other suit’s unibeam fired. It scorched the plating along the outside of his upper arm, hot enough to actually -feel-.
Tony’s eyes narrowed.
If he’d been wearing the Mark VIII, this would have been easy. Still...
Turning and cutting power quickly, Tony dropped heel-first onto War Machine’s still-hot unibeam lens and fired his bootjet, using his hand repulsors to keep from actually taking off.
As catalyzed as they were by the transistors that boosted them, Tony’s jets -were- still basically just air compressors, and point-blank they cooled instead of heated, plunging the temperature of the other suit’s unibeam’s focusing lens down fast. It exploded in a hail of high-tempered glass and a small fountain of electrical sparks.
War Machine grabbed Tony’s other ankle, and swung him against the cracked street to the side of them like a club, face first.
“THAT’S ENOUGH!” War Machine ordered.
“Y- -you wish,” Tony hissed, in the silence of his damaged helmet.
He reversed his bootjets and his hand repulsors together, crashing back into his opponent in a surprise attack. He hadn’t been set right for it though, so the move that should have ripped off the control cable Tony had spotted running below the right lower edge of War Machine’s helmet, bent the mount of War Machine’s heavy, shoulder-mounted gun instead. Fine, thought Tony, I’ll take that...
He grabbed the gun’s base, wrenched the weapon clean off at the swivel-point, and pistol-whipped War Machine in the faceplate with it, snapping his scratched gray helmet to the side with a noise like a wrecker’s hammer.
War Machine did seem dazed for a second after that one, but Tony guessed that this was the pilot inside, not the armor itself. It was the plans for the Mark II that had been stolen from him, and though Morgan’s engineers had clearly made some upgrades since, if they hadn’t found a way to lick the insulation problem, he could rattle this guy like a rat in a tin can... the analogy pleased him.
War Machine’s helmet came up off the ground slowly, and- ...the big gray suit’s weapon systems lost power. All of them at once, leaving only the internal power-assist/articulation servos and life support systems up and running.
It took Tony two full seconds to realize that he was looking at surrender.
He reached up with his free hand, and touched a control just beneath the lower edge of his damaged red and gold helmet.
Nothing happened.
Tony rapped the knuckles of his gauntlet sharply against the side of his own faceplate, and tried the control again. This time, the Plexiglas shields covering his eye and mouth-slits slid open with a misaligned squeak.
The night air was cooler than Tony remembered, and wetter. It cleared his head a little.
“Who are you really working for?” He demanded.
“Captain America,” War Machine replied, coolly serious.
“BULLSHIT! You just burned down my HOUSE!” Tony snarled, throwing the gun aside and charging his right hand repulsor in front of War Machine’s faceplate, “-and MORGAN doesn’t have the BALLS! Now- -WHO?”
“I didn’t set this fire, Iron Man.”
“Oh, then you just liked watching it BURN?” Tony asked, dangerously.
“What would you have done?” War Machine challenged, carefully.
Tony opened his mouth, and- -stopped. There -was- nothing he could do about a multicode chemical/metals fire once it got up to temperature, and if the Halon tanks under the stairs and a half-ton of atomized sodium chloride deploying hadn’t been enough when the fire first began, nothing short of the FDNY chemical unit or one of Susan’s air-forms would have been.
Tony shut his mouth, and swallowed.
The glow of the hand-repulsor facing War Machine dimmed, and Tony lowered it.
“...You had better have a damned good reason for being here,” he stated, grimly.
“-He does,” said a calm, serious voice that didn’t seem to belong in a living nightmare.
War Machine looked up past Tony’s elbow at the speaker, silent.
Tony turned, slowly.
Steve was walking up to them, now less than fifteen feet away. There were a few gray-black smears on the brightly-colored mail and leather of his costume, and one longer, darker ash-mark across the face of his shield, but...
“Cap, what... what was War Machine doing here?” Tony asked, numbly.
“He was waiting for me, Iron Man. I ordered him back here after we lost the Green Goblin,” Steve explained.
“...The Green Goblin did this?” Tony asked, carefully.
“Yes,” Steve put a hand on the hard red curve of Tony’s shoulder-armor, “-there were witnesses.”
“-Oh.”
Tony looked back down at War Machine.
War Machine met him eyeslit to eyeslit, using a slight power-up of the red indicator lights within his helmet to create the impression of a glare.
“Nothing personal,” Tony told him, flatly.
“That’s a great comfort,” the deep, distorted voice assured him coldly, “-now get the hell off me.”
Tony took a deep, unsteady breath, and felt the slight weight of Steve’s hand on his shoulder. Then he stood, and moved back out of War Machine’s way.
The battered silver-gray suit sat up with a deep whine of protesting servos, and heaved itself up out of the concrete and asphalt crater. War Machine stood up fully, sending a slight tremor through the ground at their feet, and rising to more than two feet above the other two. A slight rattle of broken cement and gravel landed around War Machine’s blocky gray boots, knocked loose from the chinks of his armor by the motion.
War Machine reached up, and touched the dark, broken face of the beam-projector in the center of his chestplate with his thickly armored fingers, exploring the damage.
He looked down at Tony thoughtfully for a slightly too-long pause, then turned to Steve.
“Captain, I’ll need to get this repaired soon. Do you have any further orders for me?”
“No, War Machine. Are you still flight-capable?” Steve asked, looking up at his huge, heavily-armored teammate with no fear whatsoever.
The reflected lights behind War Machine’s eyeslits shifted momentarily.
“I believe so,” he decided, nodding his helmet a little.
“Go ahead then,” Steve agreed, “-debriefing is at ten-hundred tomorrow at the tower unless I call you.”
“Acknowledged.”
War Machine collected his fallen gun from the pavement, and took off.
He had three jets on each boot, Tony noticed. It made sense at that weight, but... interesting. How had they compensated for the-
“Iron Man,” Steve cut across his thoughts.
“Hm? Um... yes?” Tony blinked, focusing.
“I need you to get Spider-Man and your mechanic safely to Avengers tower, and then disappear. Can you do that?”
“My-” Tony caught himself, “-yeah I can do that. Tony keeps some spare tools and cables in storage there anyway.”
“Good. See if he can do something about those radios of yours,” Steve said, touching one of the crushed red disks on Tony’s helmet.
“-What about you?” Tony wanted to know.
“I’ll call Spider-man if I need you,” Steve promised, “-I think it was him the Green Goblin was after when he came here anyway.”
“...I know,” Tony admitted, with a sigh.
-
Avengers Tower living quarters, 2:48 AM (same night).
Steve froze with his key almost to the lock of his door, listening.
Small metallic clicks. The soft creak of a chair as the person sitting leaned forwards. A muttered curse. Something hard and plastic being set down on a wooden desk. ...More clicks.
Steve relaxed, unlocked the door, and went in.
Tony looked up sharply from the scattered fruit salad of wires and gleaming helmet parts laid out in front of him- -then resumed breathing.
“Steve... hey, what took you so long?” Tony smiled, coming over.
“What do you mean?” Steve asked, hugging him.
“You entered the building over half an hour ago,” Tony told him, eyes shut.
“...How do you know that?” Steve asked, drawing back a little.
“I- -set up a few things...” Tony shrugged vaguely, “-just... damn it’s good to see you.”
“-You too,” Steve agreed, bringing him back in close. Tony’s gray t-shirt smelled of long storage and light machine oil, but the skin beneath it smelled -right-, like dried sweat, high-tech foam rubber, and... lemons. ...Well, that was the armor, but-
“Tony,” Steve said, clearly.
“Hm-?”
“How’s Peter?”
“Horrified at the revelation that I faked missing a decimal point in order to hire him, but otherwise just fine.” Tony replied, with a slight smirk.
“Tony... we didn’t lose anybody-!” Steve beamed, and leaned back against the door with Tony in his arms, shutting it harder than he’d meant to.
They both jumped a little, and Steve started to laugh, and Tony took a step in, pinning Steve against the door, and kissed him.
Another kiss followed it, and another. Tony felt his face and neck flushing warmly, and he couldn’t catch his breath, and he didn’t care-
Fingers running up through the short, dark hair at the nape of his neck and not quite closing- -a hand under the back of his shirt, migrating without hurry, kneading gently but deeply, strength held back like the glow of a hot- like the fire-
No, FUCK that, he was alive, and Steve was a solid lodestone in front of him, and he could take this because nobody was-
“Steve-” Tony began, unarmored fingers closing with a soft metallic crunch around a thick handful of scale mail across Steve’s shoulder blade, “...please.”
He didn’t usually use the word without provocation, but tonight it seemed to fit.
Steve kissed him again, a brief, firm promise. Clothes and costume went.
Steve’s shield ended up hanging over the arm of a chair.
Tony was glad his armor was already in the hockey bag under the bed. -On- the bed was much more fun, and they went down hard, legs tangling.
Tony was a unique texture, at least in Steve’s experience. Soft skin over firm muscle, sweat-slick, with a tantalizing scrape of dark body hair trapped in between, everywhere but nowhere thickly, until it-
Tony was beneath him now, dick rising smooth and hard along Steve’s own, too goddamned much against that texture... Fingers gripping Steve’s shoulder, and Tony’s hand palming both of them in a loose circle, which would have been even better with-
“Hang on. T- top drawer-” Steve managed, “-I’ll get it...”
“You have- -hah- -this is open...” Tony grinned.
“-Experiment,” Steve said with a blush, and caught his breath with a gasp as he felt Tony’s hand on him again, and saw the beads of cool, clear gel squeezing out through the other man’s fingers as they tightened just enough-
“-Nh- -Tony...!” Steve grabbed Tony’s upper arm.
“Come back here- -you’re wet- -share-...” Tony let go of Steve’s dick and took hold of his wrist, fingers sliding without traction against the blonde’s skin, pulling him -down-, until they were aligned again, slick and hard, and powerful in a way that wouldn’t wait, and didn’t have to.
Being inside Tony was different, a deep, all-consuming thunder that left his thoughts slow, and strange, and primal...
This- -this was wildfire. This was arching, striking, quick. This was each man taking his pleasure in the other, and trying to hold it together, and getting it -just- right, and slick fingers digging into Steve’s back, and Tony’s hips bucking and arching beneath his without waiting for a perfect rhythm, and breath that hissed through tight-clenched teeth, and a rising, gasping whimper of warning that couldn’t possibly be coming from him...
And then he was coming, hard and hot against Tony’s stomach, pressing down closer and sliding his dick forcefully against Tony’s in a broken rhythm he soon lost- -and Tony picked up.
Tony swore, and pressed his open mouth against Steve’s shoulder without -quite- biting down. His eyes shut tight, and he used Steve’s weight above him as a personal fulcrum, a stop-plate, a limiter that allowed him to let go, and thrust up knowing he would be driven back down just as hard until-
“Ohhh...!”
Christ...
A perfect fusion, a rising pressure-wave of liquid heat that swept through Tony’s body and -owned- him, and Steve held him down just where he wanted to be, until they were both spent, pooling together, breathing hard in the quiet of this new and unfamiliar room, that didn’t handle the soft echoes quite right.
“Well-” Tony began, when he could talk at all, “-I- -feel better- ...you?”
“Hmmmmmn...” Steve buried his face in the dark curls just above Tony’s ear, and inhaled deeply, smiling, “-yeah...”
-
Avengers Tower kitchen, 9:55 (following morning).
Tony squinted against the too-bright kitchen lights overhead. It was a modern room, with a long white sweep of contoured cabinets, a steel-topped kitchen island, and an espresso machine. Jan had gotten tired of the 1960’s primary colors thing, apparently...
“Good morning, Tony,” Peter said brightly, from his perch atop a counter to Tony’s left. He was in full costume, aside from having the bottom half of his mask pulled up.
“Mm. Hey, Spider...” Tony muttered, and- -paused, frowning. “-Since when do you put your boots on the counter, and how many cups of that coffee have you had?”
“Three?” Peter guessed, “-I mean, this would be my third one. The coffee’s really good here, you should try it.”
“OFF,” Tony ordered, pointing towards the floor, “-and please tell me you’ve been drinking the regular stuff...”
“Oh yeah, are you kidding me?” Peter hopped down, “-but the espresso did smell really good earlier, and Wanda put all kinds of stuff in hers, like cream and caramel, and hazelnut syrup, which I think is a European thing, but since-”
“Have... have you even eaten yet?” Tony interrupted, rubbing his face with one hand.
“Uh-huh. I ate with Steve and Carol before they left for the Secret Squirrel meeting earlier,” Peter nodded.
“Okay... that’s good,” Tony sighed. He poured a cup of coffee for himself, and leaned back against the counter. “So,” Tony began, nodding towards the muted television on the counter across from them, “-what else got hit?”
“Just the ones you already know about. Oh, and a museum, if you haven’t talked to Wanda and Pietro yet. That was taking place across town while we were busy with the disco fire.”
“Mm,” Tony drank his coffee, and frowned at the images on the news.
He’d been on television from time to time as Iron Man- -he was now, in fact- -but he hadn’t seen the name ‘Tony Stark’ shown on in bold white news capitals for over half a decade and he found the experience deeply unsettling.
For one thing, a thorough airing of the Stark family’s laundry would run the risk of taking the focus off the Green Goblin’s arson spree. Best case scenario if that happened, the bastard would get clean away, and at worst the Goblin might decide to do something else to get attention.
Another problem was that if his life as Tony Stark was examined in detail, the names ‘Peter Parker’ and ‘Steve Rogers’ would come up very quickly.
As Tony’s only known employee and Iron Man’s regular in-costume partner, Peter was already doubly vulnerable, but with the Green Goblin (apparently) targeting Spider-man... What if a reporter decided to do a human-interest piece, and mentioned Aunt May or Mary Jane by name?
What if some busy little muck-raking weasel dug up the fact that Peter was roommates with Norman Osborne’s son?
And what if the Green Goblin sat down in his own Halloween-themed kitchen with five bucks worth of New York City newspapers, and put all this together?
It was far from impossible.
Steve could at least handle himself, and Tony trusted that whatever paper trail the DOD had set out behind him would hold water like the Hoover Dam, but...
Steve liked being ordinary.
He liked drawing things with his finger on the bathroom mirror, and going down the street for a carton of milk, and really getting to know the people who lived in the neighborhood, and was even cautiously warming up to the idea of living in a future where it was legal for men to be ‘roommates’...
And what a perfect kick in the nuts it would be, if some over-eager reporter drove Steve back into sneaking down skylights in full costume.
...I’ll think of something, Tony promised himself.
Peter watched the images on the silent television screen change, saw the night before, and himself swinging from building to building, a thin fragment of flitting black silhouetted against the solid red-orange block of flames...
He saw smoke in the garment district, and the soggy, charred backdrop of a museum lobby... though that had been the worst of the damage, in that particular fire...
He saw a tall corner apartment building that lit the streets on both sides of it in crawling tangerine-yellow, and painted the upturned faces of the grim firemen.
And then he saw something that looked more like the surface of the moon, a daytime image... An irregular pile of pale gravel and ash, melted in places, surrounded on two and a half sides by a fragile-looking cinderblock shell.
“...-Damn-,” Tony swore, quietly.
“Steve said it reminded him of Dresden,” Peter commented.
“It should,” Tony sighed. God he needed a drink- “-Spider?”
“Yes?” Peter looked over at him.
“Things could get really ugly for a while-” Tony began.
“I- I- yeah, I got that part, holy crap...” Peter’s voice rose.
“-No, listen,” Tony insisted, “-the Goblin’s dangerous and he’s crazy, but he’s not stupid. He went after four soft targets to spread us out, then he hit my place with enough high-temperature incendiary bombs to level this tower. Most civilians don’t have access to things like that in the first place, let alone the knowledge of how and why to use them on a building that was seventy-five percent concrete and steel. That tells us we’re dealing with a professional, or a scientist. The Green Goblin also still appears to still be working alone, which means that if we can get enough fliers into the air fast enough, we can run him down with dogfighting tactics. That should be done soon, because this guy loves causing collateral.”
“What can I do then?” Peter protested, “-I can’t fly...”
“You can sling your webs almost as fast as the Falcon can fly, but what would be really useful is if you can get a spider-tracer onto him,” Tony explained, “-however...”
“What?”
“This is a villain you’re going to have to learn to share,” Tony said, putting a hand on Peter’s shoulder.
“...That just means you’re hoping Steve can come up with a better plan than using me for bait, doesn’t it?” Peter guessed, carefully.
“Yes Spider, it does,” Tony told him.
“I feel so loved- -Ooo, hey, the part about War Machine is on!” Peter pointed.
“Turn it up.”
“-EO of Stark Industries had no comment on the incident, which did an unconfirmed eighty five thousand dollars in damage to the Stark Industries War Machine armor. According to Avengers sponsor and spokeswoman Janet Van Dyne, the fight occurred as the result of a misunderstanding between the two powersuit pilots, and that since neither pilot was actually injured, the incident is being handled in-house. Witnesses say that both suits were visibly damaged by the time Captain America arrived and broke up the fight, though Iron Man has been unavailable for comment since leaving the scene. The question of exactly what these pilots could have said to each other to -cause- this fight remains unanswered...”
The camera cut to another reporter interviewing a uniformed cop on the street.
“What does one eight hundred pound gorilla say to another? How tha heck should I know?”
Cut to a pair of longhaired college students.
“It’s not always about the superheroes, you dig? There used to be some guy’s small business over there yesterday and today it’s like... a smoking hole.”
“Yeah,” the other student agreed.
“-And you’re in my face with that microphone, asking me what the guys in armored suits fought about afterwards... that- -that’s the real story here, lady. That’s messed up.”
Cut to a young woman in a knitted green hat.
“They’re a danger to society. I mean... look at this-” (camera pan over the broken section of street and downed telephone pole) “-get ‘em both off the streets.”
Cut to a grade-schooler in a ‘Yankees’ jacket.
“Maybe somethin’ about his mom...?”
Cut to a middle-aged man in workman’s overalls.
“Wha’d he say?” The man repeated, smirking, “-wrong f-BLEEP- thing, apparently.”
And with that, the news went to a toothpaste commercial.
“I love this city,” Tony decided, grinning.
“It has its moments,” Peter agreed, and finished his coffee.
-
Harry and Peter’s apartment, 2:18 PM (same day).
Peter’s soft-soled boots scraped lightly on the balcony above his own, and he dropped down.
Harry, slumped in the leather chair by the right hand set of glass double doors, looked up over his shoulder quickly, as if startled.
He had the balcony door open before Peter reached it.
“Peter, thank god you’re safe,” Harry said, and engulfed him in a hug.
Peter hugged his friend back, hesitantly. So many things had happened in the past eighteen hours, he’d almost forgotten that Harry -knew- he was Spider-man, and he certainly hadn’t expected... what was this?
“-Hi,” Peter said, partially muffled by his mask against Harry’s shoulder.
Harry let him go, and looked at him searchingly.
“You are okay, right?”
“Yeah...”
“I saw your boss’s place on the news after you called me last night,” Harry stated, letting Peter the rest of the way into the apartment.
“Yeah, it’s... looked better.” Peter agreed, shutting the door and pulling off his mask.
-It felt more natural to talk to Harry face to face, somehow.
“Both Aunt May and MJ called me this morning,” Harry continued, running a hand through his hair distractedly, “-I told them you and Tony were staying with some friends of Steve’s and that I didn’t have the number...”
“That’s good,” Peter nodded.
“-I mean what else was I going to tell her, that all three of you were staying with the Avengers because you’re Spider-Man, and your boss secretly builds high-tech superhero weapons? That, ah-”
“Harry... did you sleep at all last night?” Peter asked, studying his friend’s shadowed, somewhat waxy-looking face.
“Why?” Harry demanded, too quickly.
“Well... you look kind of rough. Are you okay?”
“...I’m sorry-” Harry began vaguely, and rubbed his face with his hands.
“What do you mean?” Peter asked.
“Peter, I just- -I’ve never...”
“...Seen what a villain can do when it’s personal?” Peter guessed, quietly.
“YES,” Harry said, vehemently.
“I tried to keep you out of it, but... you’re kind of a hero yourself,” Peter shrugged, uncomfortably.
“I...” Harry looked up, his eyes clearer, “-yeah, I guess I am,” he smiled, wryly.
“I need a shower,” said Peter.
“-Yeah, I do too,” Harry reflected, “-uh... you go first.”
“Okay.”
-
Avenger’s Tower basement, 4:40 PM (same day).
Tony paused outside the locked laboratory door, and glanced up at the security camera in the corner. He shifted his feet a little, and resisted the temptation to see if his access code still worked.
Instead he took a breath, and knocked.
“...What do you want?” Hank Pym replied through the intercom on the wall, after an unusually long pause.
“A set of clean coveralls, one latex exam glove sized large or medium, and a soldering kit,” Tony replied, brisk and professional.
“Where did you sleep last night?” Hank asked, disgustedly.
Tony shut his eyes momentarily, and resisted the urge to grit his teeth.
“Don’t do this, Pym.”
“-Of course I could just pull the security footage...” Hank continued.
“Do it and I’ll tell on you,” Tony promised.
“Come on, let’s have it, who are you going after now?”
“Sorry, I don’t kiss and tell. Can I have my supplies now?”
“What the hell do you urgently need a single latex exam glove for before dinner? ...Or do I want to know?”
“Sorry, armor secret,” Tony replied, flatly.
“What are you doing here, Stark? Why aren’t you with your friends? ...Why are you in my house?” Hank pressed.
“You have a house, Pym,” Tony said coldly, “-this is just Jannie’s dollhouse.”
“That’s not an answer,” Hank purred, with the security of a man inside his castle walls.
“I’m here because I’ve been seeing one of the Avengers for over a year now. If you haven’t noticed which one, maybe you should pay more attention.”
An ant crawled onto the back of Tony’s hand from the bottom edge of his t-shirt. Tony brushed it off onto the floor impatiently. Two more ants stood milling around on the door lock control box, and a thin trail began to march down through an unseen chink in the ceiling tiles in one corner.
“Knock it off, Pym,” Tony growled.
“Scared?” Hank asked.
Tony felt something tiny crawling in the part of his hair, and decided to ignore it for the moment.
“Of course not. You’d never be able to get the carpet replaced in here fast enough.”
“Very true,” Hank agreed.
A wasp crawled under the lab door, took to the air, and began inspecting Tony distrustfully in a series of short looping curves.
“...You’re kidding me, right?” Tony said, standing still for the insect’s examination.
“Get out of my house, Stark.”
“Equipment -first-,” Tony insisted, swallowing quietly and wondering if he could brush off whatever was walking across the side of his neck without getting stung.
Hank let him sweat for a minute or so more, then opened the door and handed Tony a roll of white cloth, a small toolbox, and the glove he’d asked for.
“Try not to step on anyone as you leave,” Hank advised pleasantly, “-they get very upset if they think you’re threatening their queen.”
“I’m not after anyone’s queen,” Tony promised, meeting Hank’s gaze levelly.
“Not anymore, no,” Hank agreed with a hard look, and shut the door again.
The wasp- -wasps, there were two of them now, buzzed sharply and dive-bombed Tony’s face.
Tony shut his eyes and felt the light, smooth bodies ricochet softly off his right cheek and fly off.
Tony sighed through his nose, then opened his eyes deliberately and picked out a path across the gently rippling carpet towards the outside door with care.
He made it, and escaped out into the hallway beyond, shedding insects as he went.
Janet was out of her goddamn mind...
-
Avengers Tower living quarters, Cap’s room, 5:02 PM (same day).
The last drop of molten solder set into place around its copper and steel connection, and Tony studied the leftovers on his- -Steve’s desk by the hiss of the dead channel. He’d been able to re-bend the radio-cup earpieces back into shape with his transistor-powered gauntlets, just a reverse of how he autographed aluminum baseball bats and sections of steel pipe by squeezing, really...
The radio parts -inside- were another story, and it had only been by canning pieces from both shattered radios that he’d gotten the right-hand one working again. The left would have to wait until he could get to a radio shack or a pawn shop or something.
But, Tony thought screwing the left cover back on, his enemies didn’t have to know about that.
He could have taken apart the radio in the kitchen or the common room and fixed both helmet-radios, but even before dealing with Hank Pym, he hadn’t quite been willing to go there. Yes the Avengers had resources, but tapping into them came with a price that had nothing to do with money, a price in acknowledged weaknesses, and... memories.
This tower really wasn’t Hank’s, it was -Jan’s-.
Tony had known her the longest of any of them, growing up in the same Manhattan jet-set. Jan always been there, flitting in and out of Tony’s life in dresses that had made him think as much as stare. Her first costume with wings had actually been a fairy princess themed tea dress, all sheer pastel-blue gauze and too much glitter. He remembered it because the wire frames of the translucent wings had been bent in a clever double loop with a back-twist that had somehow made the whole classic design look original.
Tony had lost track of her several times, because she was just a -girl- after all, and they’d never been dating...
He’d been stunned by her after returning early from MIT to take over Stark Industries, but they hadn’t happened then either, because even as a debutante, Jan had had more sense.
And then Bain... and Morgan... and Vietnam had happened.
By the time Tony returned the states with a medical discharge approved by an Army doctor he’d known in prep school, the eight-spoked wheel of the arc reactor glowing beneath the buttons of his uniform jacket, and the plans to the destroyed Mark I armor rolled up in the battery compartment of a flashlight in the duffel bag over his shoulder, things had changed.
The states hadn’t really wanted him back for a start, but that had been a detail.
The hollow beat of helicopter blades against months of dust and rain... the wise, silken discipline of Soong Sun-Mai... and finally a sweltering workshop in the jungle and the face of a good, dying man... these things had remade Tony Stark forever.
He’d come back with a mission, a purpose greater than bettering himself for the first time in his short life, and he’d still been arrogant enough to think that no one could have been re-forged as completely without leaving New York City.
Tony had been wrong.
Janet Van Dyne, the fairy princess in the blue tea dress, had become a superheroine. She had her own organic wings the color of clean oil spreading across a pond, detailed in thin gray veins. She had delicate black antennae, and a tall blonde linebacker of a boyfriend who thought the world of her and could actually -get- small enough to fool around at the size at which her insect wings emerged.
He was also perfectly willing to inject his girlfriend’s back and forehead with untested biochemically reactive cells from an entirely different phylum to get out of building her an insect-control helmet of her own, and sharing the power to command that secret, six-legged world.
Hank didn’t share well period, in Tony’s experience...
But he’d gotten along with Hank for Jan’s sake, and the biochemist’s genius had been clearly worthy of Tony’s respect.
Then... Jan had inherited six million dollars, and finally been able to pursue a few pet projects of hers, like launching the Van Dyne fashion label, and sponsoring New York’s first official and completely unrelated superhero team. It had been a hell of an undertaking, and Hank had quietly and sullenly began to fade from a moody and ineffective team captain to just one name on the Avengers growing team roster to... just Jan’s.
He hadn’t handled it well, and Jan had jilted him.
At the time, Tony had been wiring the tower’s security system, and it had been good to talk to Jan without a lab-coated shadow...
Then she had needed an ‘and guest’ for some high society function, and asked Tony if he felt like causing a scandal for old times’ sake...
And she’d smiled.
Tony had put his electric screwdriver down, and gone with her.
It had been candidly physical from the start, and it had lasted for all of about two months.
Jan still had no idea that Tony was anything other than an unusually gifted inventor and Iron Man’s one-man pit crew...
It had been fun though, and Tony had gotten to dance with her. One of the finest, classiest, most beautiful women he’d ever met, and the only one who loved flying as much as he did.
...And he’d had the sense to let her go when Hank had gotten his act together and come back, because while Tony might have been able to take on Hank, there had been no arguing with the wordless apology in Jan’s lovely blue eyes.
There were other women out there for Tony. And men.
But for Hank Pym there was only Janet Van Dyne. His gossamer-winged goddess. The only woman for whom he could submerge his ego, even temporarily. The love of Hank’s life, and in a way his greatest -thankfully most flawless- experiment.
Tony’s high-flying fairy princess was Hank’s Queen, and being cherished that completely had to be a rush or a woman as sharp as Jan wouldn’t still be with him...
But the royalty of the insect world no longer flew, and as of two years ago, neither did Ant-Man or the Wasp.
That wasn’t a nest Tony felt like disturbing for the sake of a broken radio.
Tony picked up the gleaming bead of a cracked capacitor from the handful of parts left on the desk and studied it, frowning thoughtfully.
He heard a knock.
Tony glanced over at the door quickly, then back at the small TV at his elbow, split between four grainy black and white security camera images.
Wanda.
Tony got the door and stood there with a wry, friendly smile.
“Hello, Tony. Cap told me you were staying with him, so...” Wanda hesitated, tactfully.
“It’s all right,” Tony nodded easily, “-I’m fixing Iron Man’s armor in here, not hiding. What’s up?”
“Okay, ah... I brought your record back,” she said.
“What?” Tony blinked.
“‘Under the Boardwalk’ by the Drifters. Peter borrowed it for me last week, remember?”
“-Oh yeah.”
“Here you go,” Wanda smiled warmly, and handed the record to him in its cardboard sleeve.
“Thank you,” Tony said, and meant it.
“You’re welcome, Tony.”
“...You like The Drifters?” Tony asked, taking the record half out of its sleeve and looking at it.
“Carol does, actually...” Wanda told him, lightly.
Their eyes met over the record cover, and the ends of Tony’s mustache quirked upwards.
“I called that,” he smirked.
“Cap told you?” Wanda demanded, momentarily taken aback.
“-Told me what?” Tony asked, with increasing fascination.
“I have to go,” Wanda giggled.
“Yeah, I bet. Thanks again for bringing this back, Wanda,” Tony smiled.
“See you later, Tony.”
She turned, and Tony shut the door.
He returned to the desk, and decided to make a pendant for Wanda out of two of the prettier leftover radio parts and as much of Hank’s silver-based electrical solder as he possibly could without sacrificing good taste.
Tony was about fifteen minutes into this new project when his helmet radio crackled.
“-crkkkk-Power Man to Iron Man, come in? You get yo radio fixed yet or wha-kcrrc...?”
Tony stated at his helmet for a split-second, immobile. Then he seized it and put it on, keying the mic.
“Iron Man here. What’s up, Powers?”
“SWEET CHRISTMAS SHELLHEAD, WHERE IN THA HECK HAVE YOU BEEN?!” Luke demanded, loud enough that the sound distorted in Tony’s earphones.
“Laying low until my armor was fixed, jeez. ...I take it you missed me?”
“You sneakin’, jivin’, lowlife sonofa-” Luke began.
“-That’s a yes,” Tony decided.
---
All known or referenced songs on Tony’s jukebox at the time of its destruction:
F-11 Immigrant Song Led Zeppelin
? Iron Man Black Sabbath
? Paranoid Black Sabbath
? My Way Frank Sinatra
G-12 The End The Doors
B-3 Rock a Hula Baby Elvis
D-1 Lynden Johnson Told the Nation Tom Paxton
F-2 The Battle of Evermore Led Zeppelin
? Born to be Wild Steppenwolf
C-12 (dunno, but you can dance to it) ?
? Up on the Roof The Drifters
C-4 Mr. Tambourine Man Bob Dylan
? What’s Going On Marvin Gaye
? My Boy Elvis
? Break on Through The Doors
? Ruby Tuesday The Rolling Stones
? I Walk the Line Johnny Cash
? All Along the Watchtower Jimmy Hendrix
? Rock Around the Clock Bill Haley and His Comets
D-9 Rocket Man Elton John
C-11 Wichita Lineman Glenn Campbell
? Leader of the Pack The Shangri-la’s
? School’s Out Alice Cooper
A-10 Ziggy Stardust David Bowie
? Under the Boardwalk The Drifters
Also used:
Radio White Room Cream
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: Sex, graphic superhero violence, and creepy insects.
Pairing/Characters: Steve/Tony, Carol/Wanda implied. (Co-starring Peter Parker, Harry Osborne, War Machine, Hank Pym, and Luke Cage.)
Summary: Scorched earth.
===========================================================
Tony’s kitchen, 7:33 AM.
Steve studied the slightly blurred green and purple image on the front page of the newspaper in front of him. The amateurish photo had been taken from below and at a distance, and it captured the collateral damage of the Goblin’s rampage far better than it showed the Goblin himself. Steve searched for any flaw, any pattern or familiarity from the past in this new menace...
Nothing really came to him.
The Goblin’s glider didn’t look like it would hold up well against a blow from his shield, but there was something else to see here...
The faces of a few fleeing bystanders in the lower right-hand side of the picture caught Steve’s eye. They were terrified.
The Green Goblin was, (insanity aside) just one man with what amounted to a bag of grenades and a standard-issue SHIELD glider... wasn’t he?
-
The Iron Horse Garage, upstairs bathroom, 8:40 PM.
Tony shut the shower off, and stepped out dripping. He toweled himself mostly dry, then wiped down the wrist-seal of the latex glove covering the front of his arc reactor carefully, and pulled it off with a snap. Tony raised a hand to wipe the mirror so he could see to shave, and- -stopped.
A smile spread quietly across his face.
Tony moved his hand to the right, and wiped the condensation off a section of mirror that didn’t have Steve’s finger-traced palm tree sketched on it.
-
Downtown NYC, 10:48 PM.
The wind was rising.
Tony fired his bootjets and took off straight into it, tracking the signal from Peter’s Spider-comm. in his peripheral vision. The kid could outrun a police cruiser when he really got swinging, and the next fire wasn’t far away.
It was a multi-level nightclub, tall lines of sputtering neon wavering in the heat of the blaze within. The lower levels of the building were already gone, a glowing inferno through the open front double doors facing onto the street. The shaken crowd outside had had the sense to fall back more at that point, and they cowered like a gold and polyester rainbow on the far side of the hastily erected police barricades.
“Zip lines!” Tony ordered without looking up, and landed as close to the doors as he could get without getting sucked in.
Boots firmly on the ground and hand-repulsors braced magnetically against the structural steel of the building to withstand the indraft, Tony walked the rest of the way, and took hold of both door handles. He yanked them shut with a sudden hard wrench, and flipped the polarity of his left hand-repulsor, holding the heavy metal security doors shut while he welded them together with the laser on his right-hand glove. It was quick, and dirty, and effective. With half its air cut off, the flames on the top floors slackened, but the respite wouldn’t last...
A shadow in the smoky night sky above, Peter was swinging back and forth between the roof of the club and the roof of a high-rise across the street, bringing people across with him. The fire department had one engine trained on the club itself, and another hosing the nearby buildings for the inevitable collapse. Fat drops spattered and hissed across the hot metal of Tony’s faceplate as he drew back from the sealed double-doors. The cops had taken charge of the two long, thickly-spun weblines Peter had left from the corners of the building to the ground. The braver and more desperate of the trapped people above were wrapping their jackets or shirts around the line and sliding down the long curve to the ground that way. The zip lines were a calculated risk, dangerous as hell to use with a mob of untrained civilians up there, but with the roof tar melting under them, there really hadn’t been any choice.
Tony took to the air again, saw a girl fall off the nearer line, and stopped himself from catching her in a suit hot enough to peel off skin -just- in time. Tony whipped a quick loop upwards, flew down through the cold stream of one of the fire hoses, and caught the girl with barely ten feet to spare. He had, he judged, about three seconds before the reflexive fear-of-falling grip gave way to the ow-hot-metal letting go, but that was more than enough time to speed-brake and drop his charge off into the arms of a waiting fireman.
The two looked at each other, momentarily stunned.
The fireman because the girl was -very- pretty, and since she’d used her dress to protect her hands from the spider-web zip line, she was now in nothing but her underwear and one red high-heeled shoe...
The girl because she was happy to still be alive, probably.
It was a moment, one of hundreds Tony had seen through iron eyeslits over the years. They were there- -and gone- -and if he could remember them at the right times later, it was moments like that that kept him from going mad.
The entire thought took point two seconds and then Tony was gone again, airborne...
Iron Man stood in the rain of an open fire hydrant, boots apart on the wet concrete, arms held slightly up away from his sides. He tipped his face up, eyes shut, and let the water rinse the caked ash off his clear (now slightly warped) Plexiglas eye shields. There were muffled voices all around him, but for the moment all the fires were out, and the whirr of his suit’s internal cooling fans was the sweetest sound on Earth.
Tony had the emergency/police band frequency crackling rapid-fire information in his right ear, and only smooth static in his left, the channel kept open for Peter.
Information. Water. Rotatory-
Wait... WHAT? Why were they talking about his-?
Tony’s eyes snapped open.
“SPIDER,” he barked, keying his helmet radio.
“Did you just hear what I-?!” Peter began, almost squelching out the channel.
“Where are you?” Tony demanded, shortly.
“The roof across the street,” Peter replied.
“Stand by for pickup,” Tony ordered, and blasted up out of the hydrant-spray, shattering the water into a spreading nimbus lit from within.
-
Near the Iron Horse Garage, 12:07 AM (same night).
The fire could be seen for miles. It wasn’t big, but -damn- it was bright, cooking off white-hot in the center of a block the first explosion had plunged into darkness.
White-hot... that had to be the magnesium alloy wheels stored in the broom closet upstairs, Tony thought, detaching Peter into a side-street two blocks out. Peter cut his momentum by webbing off a lamppost, and vanished into shadow. Then he was just a silent red dot, shifting up and down Tony’s right-side tracking indicator lights as he swung between buildings.
Tony’s eyes focused forwards as he flew, actually squinting a little against the glare of the metal-fire, isolated in the darkness.
He wasn’t alone up here.
The ballsy son of a bitch had actually... stayed.
Tony slammed into War Machine at a speed most light aircraft couldn’t match, fists-first.
They plowed through the top quarter of a telephone pole without pausing, and dug a shallow, thirty-foot gouge in the asphalt of the street beyond before pulverizing the far curb.
War Machine took the brunt of the impact, as Tony had meant for him to.
The heavy, silver-gray armor was bigger than Tony’s, slower. At eight and a half feet tall though, the War Machine was by far the smallest and best designed of the ‘knockoff’ suits. Tony wasn’t sure -what- its power source was yet, but he was really looking forward to tearing it apart for a look-see...
War Machine kneed him. The impact came hard, striking the back plates of Tony’s armor with a tooth-jarring clang, and driving him forwards.
Huge steel hands closed around Tony’s helmet, tightening with a deafening screech of grinding metal that drowned out the sound of both Tony’s radios... then silenced them with a crunch and held him, pinned.
Tony fired both hand-repulsors, aiming for the joints of War Machine’s otherwise thick shoulder-armor, and broke loose. He hovered twelve feet up and rained down electromagnetic hell, burst after burst at close range, -hammering- the other suit apart with a ferocity that-
-Shit-
Tony darted out of line with War Machine’s chestplate just before the other suit’s unibeam fired. It scorched the plating along the outside of his upper arm, hot enough to actually -feel-.
Tony’s eyes narrowed.
If he’d been wearing the Mark VIII, this would have been easy. Still...
Turning and cutting power quickly, Tony dropped heel-first onto War Machine’s still-hot unibeam lens and fired his bootjet, using his hand repulsors to keep from actually taking off.
As catalyzed as they were by the transistors that boosted them, Tony’s jets -were- still basically just air compressors, and point-blank they cooled instead of heated, plunging the temperature of the other suit’s unibeam’s focusing lens down fast. It exploded in a hail of high-tempered glass and a small fountain of electrical sparks.
War Machine grabbed Tony’s other ankle, and swung him against the cracked street to the side of them like a club, face first.
“THAT’S ENOUGH!” War Machine ordered.
“Y- -you wish,” Tony hissed, in the silence of his damaged helmet.
He reversed his bootjets and his hand repulsors together, crashing back into his opponent in a surprise attack. He hadn’t been set right for it though, so the move that should have ripped off the control cable Tony had spotted running below the right lower edge of War Machine’s helmet, bent the mount of War Machine’s heavy, shoulder-mounted gun instead. Fine, thought Tony, I’ll take that...
He grabbed the gun’s base, wrenched the weapon clean off at the swivel-point, and pistol-whipped War Machine in the faceplate with it, snapping his scratched gray helmet to the side with a noise like a wrecker’s hammer.
War Machine did seem dazed for a second after that one, but Tony guessed that this was the pilot inside, not the armor itself. It was the plans for the Mark II that had been stolen from him, and though Morgan’s engineers had clearly made some upgrades since, if they hadn’t found a way to lick the insulation problem, he could rattle this guy like a rat in a tin can... the analogy pleased him.
War Machine’s helmet came up off the ground slowly, and- ...the big gray suit’s weapon systems lost power. All of them at once, leaving only the internal power-assist/articulation servos and life support systems up and running.
It took Tony two full seconds to realize that he was looking at surrender.
He reached up with his free hand, and touched a control just beneath the lower edge of his damaged red and gold helmet.
Nothing happened.
Tony rapped the knuckles of his gauntlet sharply against the side of his own faceplate, and tried the control again. This time, the Plexiglas shields covering his eye and mouth-slits slid open with a misaligned squeak.
The night air was cooler than Tony remembered, and wetter. It cleared his head a little.
“Who are you really working for?” He demanded.
“Captain America,” War Machine replied, coolly serious.
“BULLSHIT! You just burned down my HOUSE!” Tony snarled, throwing the gun aside and charging his right hand repulsor in front of War Machine’s faceplate, “-and MORGAN doesn’t have the BALLS! Now- -WHO?”
“I didn’t set this fire, Iron Man.”
“Oh, then you just liked watching it BURN?” Tony asked, dangerously.
“What would you have done?” War Machine challenged, carefully.
Tony opened his mouth, and- -stopped. There -was- nothing he could do about a multicode chemical/metals fire once it got up to temperature, and if the Halon tanks under the stairs and a half-ton of atomized sodium chloride deploying hadn’t been enough when the fire first began, nothing short of the FDNY chemical unit or one of Susan’s air-forms would have been.
Tony shut his mouth, and swallowed.
The glow of the hand-repulsor facing War Machine dimmed, and Tony lowered it.
“...You had better have a damned good reason for being here,” he stated, grimly.
“-He does,” said a calm, serious voice that didn’t seem to belong in a living nightmare.
War Machine looked up past Tony’s elbow at the speaker, silent.
Tony turned, slowly.
Steve was walking up to them, now less than fifteen feet away. There were a few gray-black smears on the brightly-colored mail and leather of his costume, and one longer, darker ash-mark across the face of his shield, but...
“Cap, what... what was War Machine doing here?” Tony asked, numbly.
“He was waiting for me, Iron Man. I ordered him back here after we lost the Green Goblin,” Steve explained.
“...The Green Goblin did this?” Tony asked, carefully.
“Yes,” Steve put a hand on the hard red curve of Tony’s shoulder-armor, “-there were witnesses.”
“-Oh.”
Tony looked back down at War Machine.
War Machine met him eyeslit to eyeslit, using a slight power-up of the red indicator lights within his helmet to create the impression of a glare.
“Nothing personal,” Tony told him, flatly.
“That’s a great comfort,” the deep, distorted voice assured him coldly, “-now get the hell off me.”
Tony took a deep, unsteady breath, and felt the slight weight of Steve’s hand on his shoulder. Then he stood, and moved back out of War Machine’s way.
The battered silver-gray suit sat up with a deep whine of protesting servos, and heaved itself up out of the concrete and asphalt crater. War Machine stood up fully, sending a slight tremor through the ground at their feet, and rising to more than two feet above the other two. A slight rattle of broken cement and gravel landed around War Machine’s blocky gray boots, knocked loose from the chinks of his armor by the motion.
War Machine reached up, and touched the dark, broken face of the beam-projector in the center of his chestplate with his thickly armored fingers, exploring the damage.
He looked down at Tony thoughtfully for a slightly too-long pause, then turned to Steve.
“Captain, I’ll need to get this repaired soon. Do you have any further orders for me?”
“No, War Machine. Are you still flight-capable?” Steve asked, looking up at his huge, heavily-armored teammate with no fear whatsoever.
The reflected lights behind War Machine’s eyeslits shifted momentarily.
“I believe so,” he decided, nodding his helmet a little.
“Go ahead then,” Steve agreed, “-debriefing is at ten-hundred tomorrow at the tower unless I call you.”
“Acknowledged.”
War Machine collected his fallen gun from the pavement, and took off.
He had three jets on each boot, Tony noticed. It made sense at that weight, but... interesting. How had they compensated for the-
“Iron Man,” Steve cut across his thoughts.
“Hm? Um... yes?” Tony blinked, focusing.
“I need you to get Spider-Man and your mechanic safely to Avengers tower, and then disappear. Can you do that?”
“My-” Tony caught himself, “-yeah I can do that. Tony keeps some spare tools and cables in storage there anyway.”
“Good. See if he can do something about those radios of yours,” Steve said, touching one of the crushed red disks on Tony’s helmet.
“-What about you?” Tony wanted to know.
“I’ll call Spider-man if I need you,” Steve promised, “-I think it was him the Green Goblin was after when he came here anyway.”
“...I know,” Tony admitted, with a sigh.
-
Avengers Tower living quarters, 2:48 AM (same night).
Steve froze with his key almost to the lock of his door, listening.
Small metallic clicks. The soft creak of a chair as the person sitting leaned forwards. A muttered curse. Something hard and plastic being set down on a wooden desk. ...More clicks.
Steve relaxed, unlocked the door, and went in.
Tony looked up sharply from the scattered fruit salad of wires and gleaming helmet parts laid out in front of him- -then resumed breathing.
“Steve... hey, what took you so long?” Tony smiled, coming over.
“What do you mean?” Steve asked, hugging him.
“You entered the building over half an hour ago,” Tony told him, eyes shut.
“...How do you know that?” Steve asked, drawing back a little.
“I- -set up a few things...” Tony shrugged vaguely, “-just... damn it’s good to see you.”
“-You too,” Steve agreed, bringing him back in close. Tony’s gray t-shirt smelled of long storage and light machine oil, but the skin beneath it smelled -right-, like dried sweat, high-tech foam rubber, and... lemons. ...Well, that was the armor, but-
“Tony,” Steve said, clearly.
“Hm-?”
“How’s Peter?”
“Horrified at the revelation that I faked missing a decimal point in order to hire him, but otherwise just fine.” Tony replied, with a slight smirk.
“Tony... we didn’t lose anybody-!” Steve beamed, and leaned back against the door with Tony in his arms, shutting it harder than he’d meant to.
They both jumped a little, and Steve started to laugh, and Tony took a step in, pinning Steve against the door, and kissed him.
Another kiss followed it, and another. Tony felt his face and neck flushing warmly, and he couldn’t catch his breath, and he didn’t care-
Fingers running up through the short, dark hair at the nape of his neck and not quite closing- -a hand under the back of his shirt, migrating without hurry, kneading gently but deeply, strength held back like the glow of a hot- like the fire-
No, FUCK that, he was alive, and Steve was a solid lodestone in front of him, and he could take this because nobody was-
“Steve-” Tony began, unarmored fingers closing with a soft metallic crunch around a thick handful of scale mail across Steve’s shoulder blade, “...please.”
He didn’t usually use the word without provocation, but tonight it seemed to fit.
Steve kissed him again, a brief, firm promise. Clothes and costume went.
Steve’s shield ended up hanging over the arm of a chair.
Tony was glad his armor was already in the hockey bag under the bed. -On- the bed was much more fun, and they went down hard, legs tangling.
Tony was a unique texture, at least in Steve’s experience. Soft skin over firm muscle, sweat-slick, with a tantalizing scrape of dark body hair trapped in between, everywhere but nowhere thickly, until it-
Tony was beneath him now, dick rising smooth and hard along Steve’s own, too goddamned much against that texture... Fingers gripping Steve’s shoulder, and Tony’s hand palming both of them in a loose circle, which would have been even better with-
“Hang on. T- top drawer-” Steve managed, “-I’ll get it...”
“You have- -hah- -this is open...” Tony grinned.
“-Experiment,” Steve said with a blush, and caught his breath with a gasp as he felt Tony’s hand on him again, and saw the beads of cool, clear gel squeezing out through the other man’s fingers as they tightened just enough-
“-Nh- -Tony...!” Steve grabbed Tony’s upper arm.
“Come back here- -you’re wet- -share-...” Tony let go of Steve’s dick and took hold of his wrist, fingers sliding without traction against the blonde’s skin, pulling him -down-, until they were aligned again, slick and hard, and powerful in a way that wouldn’t wait, and didn’t have to.
Being inside Tony was different, a deep, all-consuming thunder that left his thoughts slow, and strange, and primal...
This- -this was wildfire. This was arching, striking, quick. This was each man taking his pleasure in the other, and trying to hold it together, and getting it -just- right, and slick fingers digging into Steve’s back, and Tony’s hips bucking and arching beneath his without waiting for a perfect rhythm, and breath that hissed through tight-clenched teeth, and a rising, gasping whimper of warning that couldn’t possibly be coming from him...
And then he was coming, hard and hot against Tony’s stomach, pressing down closer and sliding his dick forcefully against Tony’s in a broken rhythm he soon lost- -and Tony picked up.
Tony swore, and pressed his open mouth against Steve’s shoulder without -quite- biting down. His eyes shut tight, and he used Steve’s weight above him as a personal fulcrum, a stop-plate, a limiter that allowed him to let go, and thrust up knowing he would be driven back down just as hard until-
“Ohhh...!”
Christ...
A perfect fusion, a rising pressure-wave of liquid heat that swept through Tony’s body and -owned- him, and Steve held him down just where he wanted to be, until they were both spent, pooling together, breathing hard in the quiet of this new and unfamiliar room, that didn’t handle the soft echoes quite right.
“Well-” Tony began, when he could talk at all, “-I- -feel better- ...you?”
“Hmmmmmn...” Steve buried his face in the dark curls just above Tony’s ear, and inhaled deeply, smiling, “-yeah...”
-
Avengers Tower kitchen, 9:55 (following morning).
Tony squinted against the too-bright kitchen lights overhead. It was a modern room, with a long white sweep of contoured cabinets, a steel-topped kitchen island, and an espresso machine. Jan had gotten tired of the 1960’s primary colors thing, apparently...
“Good morning, Tony,” Peter said brightly, from his perch atop a counter to Tony’s left. He was in full costume, aside from having the bottom half of his mask pulled up.
“Mm. Hey, Spider...” Tony muttered, and- -paused, frowning. “-Since when do you put your boots on the counter, and how many cups of that coffee have you had?”
“Three?” Peter guessed, “-I mean, this would be my third one. The coffee’s really good here, you should try it.”
“OFF,” Tony ordered, pointing towards the floor, “-and please tell me you’ve been drinking the regular stuff...”
“Oh yeah, are you kidding me?” Peter hopped down, “-but the espresso did smell really good earlier, and Wanda put all kinds of stuff in hers, like cream and caramel, and hazelnut syrup, which I think is a European thing, but since-”
“Have... have you even eaten yet?” Tony interrupted, rubbing his face with one hand.
“Uh-huh. I ate with Steve and Carol before they left for the Secret Squirrel meeting earlier,” Peter nodded.
“Okay... that’s good,” Tony sighed. He poured a cup of coffee for himself, and leaned back against the counter. “So,” Tony began, nodding towards the muted television on the counter across from them, “-what else got hit?”
“Just the ones you already know about. Oh, and a museum, if you haven’t talked to Wanda and Pietro yet. That was taking place across town while we were busy with the disco fire.”
“Mm,” Tony drank his coffee, and frowned at the images on the news.
He’d been on television from time to time as Iron Man- -he was now, in fact- -but he hadn’t seen the name ‘Tony Stark’ shown on in bold white news capitals for over half a decade and he found the experience deeply unsettling.
For one thing, a thorough airing of the Stark family’s laundry would run the risk of taking the focus off the Green Goblin’s arson spree. Best case scenario if that happened, the bastard would get clean away, and at worst the Goblin might decide to do something else to get attention.
Another problem was that if his life as Tony Stark was examined in detail, the names ‘Peter Parker’ and ‘Steve Rogers’ would come up very quickly.
As Tony’s only known employee and Iron Man’s regular in-costume partner, Peter was already doubly vulnerable, but with the Green Goblin (apparently) targeting Spider-man... What if a reporter decided to do a human-interest piece, and mentioned Aunt May or Mary Jane by name?
What if some busy little muck-raking weasel dug up the fact that Peter was roommates with Norman Osborne’s son?
And what if the Green Goblin sat down in his own Halloween-themed kitchen with five bucks worth of New York City newspapers, and put all this together?
It was far from impossible.
Steve could at least handle himself, and Tony trusted that whatever paper trail the DOD had set out behind him would hold water like the Hoover Dam, but...
Steve liked being ordinary.
He liked drawing things with his finger on the bathroom mirror, and going down the street for a carton of milk, and really getting to know the people who lived in the neighborhood, and was even cautiously warming up to the idea of living in a future where it was legal for men to be ‘roommates’...
And what a perfect kick in the nuts it would be, if some over-eager reporter drove Steve back into sneaking down skylights in full costume.
...I’ll think of something, Tony promised himself.
Peter watched the images on the silent television screen change, saw the night before, and himself swinging from building to building, a thin fragment of flitting black silhouetted against the solid red-orange block of flames...
He saw smoke in the garment district, and the soggy, charred backdrop of a museum lobby... though that had been the worst of the damage, in that particular fire...
He saw a tall corner apartment building that lit the streets on both sides of it in crawling tangerine-yellow, and painted the upturned faces of the grim firemen.
And then he saw something that looked more like the surface of the moon, a daytime image... An irregular pile of pale gravel and ash, melted in places, surrounded on two and a half sides by a fragile-looking cinderblock shell.
“...-Damn-,” Tony swore, quietly.
“Steve said it reminded him of Dresden,” Peter commented.
“It should,” Tony sighed. God he needed a drink- “-Spider?”
“Yes?” Peter looked over at him.
“Things could get really ugly for a while-” Tony began.
“I- I- yeah, I got that part, holy crap...” Peter’s voice rose.
“-No, listen,” Tony insisted, “-the Goblin’s dangerous and he’s crazy, but he’s not stupid. He went after four soft targets to spread us out, then he hit my place with enough high-temperature incendiary bombs to level this tower. Most civilians don’t have access to things like that in the first place, let alone the knowledge of how and why to use them on a building that was seventy-five percent concrete and steel. That tells us we’re dealing with a professional, or a scientist. The Green Goblin also still appears to still be working alone, which means that if we can get enough fliers into the air fast enough, we can run him down with dogfighting tactics. That should be done soon, because this guy loves causing collateral.”
“What can I do then?” Peter protested, “-I can’t fly...”
“You can sling your webs almost as fast as the Falcon can fly, but what would be really useful is if you can get a spider-tracer onto him,” Tony explained, “-however...”
“What?”
“This is a villain you’re going to have to learn to share,” Tony said, putting a hand on Peter’s shoulder.
“...That just means you’re hoping Steve can come up with a better plan than using me for bait, doesn’t it?” Peter guessed, carefully.
“Yes Spider, it does,” Tony told him.
“I feel so loved- -Ooo, hey, the part about War Machine is on!” Peter pointed.
“Turn it up.”
“-EO of Stark Industries had no comment on the incident, which did an unconfirmed eighty five thousand dollars in damage to the Stark Industries War Machine armor. According to Avengers sponsor and spokeswoman Janet Van Dyne, the fight occurred as the result of a misunderstanding between the two powersuit pilots, and that since neither pilot was actually injured, the incident is being handled in-house. Witnesses say that both suits were visibly damaged by the time Captain America arrived and broke up the fight, though Iron Man has been unavailable for comment since leaving the scene. The question of exactly what these pilots could have said to each other to -cause- this fight remains unanswered...”
The camera cut to another reporter interviewing a uniformed cop on the street.
“What does one eight hundred pound gorilla say to another? How tha heck should I know?”
Cut to a pair of longhaired college students.
“It’s not always about the superheroes, you dig? There used to be some guy’s small business over there yesterday and today it’s like... a smoking hole.”
“Yeah,” the other student agreed.
“-And you’re in my face with that microphone, asking me what the guys in armored suits fought about afterwards... that- -that’s the real story here, lady. That’s messed up.”
Cut to a young woman in a knitted green hat.
“They’re a danger to society. I mean... look at this-” (camera pan over the broken section of street and downed telephone pole) “-get ‘em both off the streets.”
Cut to a grade-schooler in a ‘Yankees’ jacket.
“Maybe somethin’ about his mom...?”
Cut to a middle-aged man in workman’s overalls.
“Wha’d he say?” The man repeated, smirking, “-wrong f-BLEEP- thing, apparently.”
And with that, the news went to a toothpaste commercial.
“I love this city,” Tony decided, grinning.
“It has its moments,” Peter agreed, and finished his coffee.
-
Harry and Peter’s apartment, 2:18 PM (same day).
Peter’s soft-soled boots scraped lightly on the balcony above his own, and he dropped down.
Harry, slumped in the leather chair by the right hand set of glass double doors, looked up over his shoulder quickly, as if startled.
He had the balcony door open before Peter reached it.
“Peter, thank god you’re safe,” Harry said, and engulfed him in a hug.
Peter hugged his friend back, hesitantly. So many things had happened in the past eighteen hours, he’d almost forgotten that Harry -knew- he was Spider-man, and he certainly hadn’t expected... what was this?
“-Hi,” Peter said, partially muffled by his mask against Harry’s shoulder.
Harry let him go, and looked at him searchingly.
“You are okay, right?”
“Yeah...”
“I saw your boss’s place on the news after you called me last night,” Harry stated, letting Peter the rest of the way into the apartment.
“Yeah, it’s... looked better.” Peter agreed, shutting the door and pulling off his mask.
-It felt more natural to talk to Harry face to face, somehow.
“Both Aunt May and MJ called me this morning,” Harry continued, running a hand through his hair distractedly, “-I told them you and Tony were staying with some friends of Steve’s and that I didn’t have the number...”
“That’s good,” Peter nodded.
“-I mean what else was I going to tell her, that all three of you were staying with the Avengers because you’re Spider-Man, and your boss secretly builds high-tech superhero weapons? That, ah-”
“Harry... did you sleep at all last night?” Peter asked, studying his friend’s shadowed, somewhat waxy-looking face.
“Why?” Harry demanded, too quickly.
“Well... you look kind of rough. Are you okay?”
“...I’m sorry-” Harry began vaguely, and rubbed his face with his hands.
“What do you mean?” Peter asked.
“Peter, I just- -I’ve never...”
“...Seen what a villain can do when it’s personal?” Peter guessed, quietly.
“YES,” Harry said, vehemently.
“I tried to keep you out of it, but... you’re kind of a hero yourself,” Peter shrugged, uncomfortably.
“I...” Harry looked up, his eyes clearer, “-yeah, I guess I am,” he smiled, wryly.
“I need a shower,” said Peter.
“-Yeah, I do too,” Harry reflected, “-uh... you go first.”
“Okay.”
-
Avenger’s Tower basement, 4:40 PM (same day).
Tony paused outside the locked laboratory door, and glanced up at the security camera in the corner. He shifted his feet a little, and resisted the temptation to see if his access code still worked.
Instead he took a breath, and knocked.
“...What do you want?” Hank Pym replied through the intercom on the wall, after an unusually long pause.
“A set of clean coveralls, one latex exam glove sized large or medium, and a soldering kit,” Tony replied, brisk and professional.
“Where did you sleep last night?” Hank asked, disgustedly.
Tony shut his eyes momentarily, and resisted the urge to grit his teeth.
“Don’t do this, Pym.”
“-Of course I could just pull the security footage...” Hank continued.
“Do it and I’ll tell on you,” Tony promised.
“Come on, let’s have it, who are you going after now?”
“Sorry, I don’t kiss and tell. Can I have my supplies now?”
“What the hell do you urgently need a single latex exam glove for before dinner? ...Or do I want to know?”
“Sorry, armor secret,” Tony replied, flatly.
“What are you doing here, Stark? Why aren’t you with your friends? ...Why are you in my house?” Hank pressed.
“You have a house, Pym,” Tony said coldly, “-this is just Jannie’s dollhouse.”
“That’s not an answer,” Hank purred, with the security of a man inside his castle walls.
“I’m here because I’ve been seeing one of the Avengers for over a year now. If you haven’t noticed which one, maybe you should pay more attention.”
An ant crawled onto the back of Tony’s hand from the bottom edge of his t-shirt. Tony brushed it off onto the floor impatiently. Two more ants stood milling around on the door lock control box, and a thin trail began to march down through an unseen chink in the ceiling tiles in one corner.
“Knock it off, Pym,” Tony growled.
“Scared?” Hank asked.
Tony felt something tiny crawling in the part of his hair, and decided to ignore it for the moment.
“Of course not. You’d never be able to get the carpet replaced in here fast enough.”
“Very true,” Hank agreed.
A wasp crawled under the lab door, took to the air, and began inspecting Tony distrustfully in a series of short looping curves.
“...You’re kidding me, right?” Tony said, standing still for the insect’s examination.
“Get out of my house, Stark.”
“Equipment -first-,” Tony insisted, swallowing quietly and wondering if he could brush off whatever was walking across the side of his neck without getting stung.
Hank let him sweat for a minute or so more, then opened the door and handed Tony a roll of white cloth, a small toolbox, and the glove he’d asked for.
“Try not to step on anyone as you leave,” Hank advised pleasantly, “-they get very upset if they think you’re threatening their queen.”
“I’m not after anyone’s queen,” Tony promised, meeting Hank’s gaze levelly.
“Not anymore, no,” Hank agreed with a hard look, and shut the door again.
The wasp- -wasps, there were two of them now, buzzed sharply and dive-bombed Tony’s face.
Tony shut his eyes and felt the light, smooth bodies ricochet softly off his right cheek and fly off.
Tony sighed through his nose, then opened his eyes deliberately and picked out a path across the gently rippling carpet towards the outside door with care.
He made it, and escaped out into the hallway beyond, shedding insects as he went.
Janet was out of her goddamn mind...
-
Avengers Tower living quarters, Cap’s room, 5:02 PM (same day).
The last drop of molten solder set into place around its copper and steel connection, and Tony studied the leftovers on his- -Steve’s desk by the hiss of the dead channel. He’d been able to re-bend the radio-cup earpieces back into shape with his transistor-powered gauntlets, just a reverse of how he autographed aluminum baseball bats and sections of steel pipe by squeezing, really...
The radio parts -inside- were another story, and it had only been by canning pieces from both shattered radios that he’d gotten the right-hand one working again. The left would have to wait until he could get to a radio shack or a pawn shop or something.
But, Tony thought screwing the left cover back on, his enemies didn’t have to know about that.
He could have taken apart the radio in the kitchen or the common room and fixed both helmet-radios, but even before dealing with Hank Pym, he hadn’t quite been willing to go there. Yes the Avengers had resources, but tapping into them came with a price that had nothing to do with money, a price in acknowledged weaknesses, and... memories.
This tower really wasn’t Hank’s, it was -Jan’s-.
Tony had known her the longest of any of them, growing up in the same Manhattan jet-set. Jan always been there, flitting in and out of Tony’s life in dresses that had made him think as much as stare. Her first costume with wings had actually been a fairy princess themed tea dress, all sheer pastel-blue gauze and too much glitter. He remembered it because the wire frames of the translucent wings had been bent in a clever double loop with a back-twist that had somehow made the whole classic design look original.
Tony had lost track of her several times, because she was just a -girl- after all, and they’d never been dating...
He’d been stunned by her after returning early from MIT to take over Stark Industries, but they hadn’t happened then either, because even as a debutante, Jan had had more sense.
And then Bain... and Morgan... and Vietnam had happened.
By the time Tony returned the states with a medical discharge approved by an Army doctor he’d known in prep school, the eight-spoked wheel of the arc reactor glowing beneath the buttons of his uniform jacket, and the plans to the destroyed Mark I armor rolled up in the battery compartment of a flashlight in the duffel bag over his shoulder, things had changed.
The states hadn’t really wanted him back for a start, but that had been a detail.
The hollow beat of helicopter blades against months of dust and rain... the wise, silken discipline of Soong Sun-Mai... and finally a sweltering workshop in the jungle and the face of a good, dying man... these things had remade Tony Stark forever.
He’d come back with a mission, a purpose greater than bettering himself for the first time in his short life, and he’d still been arrogant enough to think that no one could have been re-forged as completely without leaving New York City.
Tony had been wrong.
Janet Van Dyne, the fairy princess in the blue tea dress, had become a superheroine. She had her own organic wings the color of clean oil spreading across a pond, detailed in thin gray veins. She had delicate black antennae, and a tall blonde linebacker of a boyfriend who thought the world of her and could actually -get- small enough to fool around at the size at which her insect wings emerged.
He was also perfectly willing to inject his girlfriend’s back and forehead with untested biochemically reactive cells from an entirely different phylum to get out of building her an insect-control helmet of her own, and sharing the power to command that secret, six-legged world.
Hank didn’t share well period, in Tony’s experience...
But he’d gotten along with Hank for Jan’s sake, and the biochemist’s genius had been clearly worthy of Tony’s respect.
Then... Jan had inherited six million dollars, and finally been able to pursue a few pet projects of hers, like launching the Van Dyne fashion label, and sponsoring New York’s first official and completely unrelated superhero team. It had been a hell of an undertaking, and Hank had quietly and sullenly began to fade from a moody and ineffective team captain to just one name on the Avengers growing team roster to... just Jan’s.
He hadn’t handled it well, and Jan had jilted him.
At the time, Tony had been wiring the tower’s security system, and it had been good to talk to Jan without a lab-coated shadow...
Then she had needed an ‘and guest’ for some high society function, and asked Tony if he felt like causing a scandal for old times’ sake...
And she’d smiled.
Tony had put his electric screwdriver down, and gone with her.
It had been candidly physical from the start, and it had lasted for all of about two months.
Jan still had no idea that Tony was anything other than an unusually gifted inventor and Iron Man’s one-man pit crew...
It had been fun though, and Tony had gotten to dance with her. One of the finest, classiest, most beautiful women he’d ever met, and the only one who loved flying as much as he did.
...And he’d had the sense to let her go when Hank had gotten his act together and come back, because while Tony might have been able to take on Hank, there had been no arguing with the wordless apology in Jan’s lovely blue eyes.
There were other women out there for Tony. And men.
But for Hank Pym there was only Janet Van Dyne. His gossamer-winged goddess. The only woman for whom he could submerge his ego, even temporarily. The love of Hank’s life, and in a way his greatest -thankfully most flawless- experiment.
Tony’s high-flying fairy princess was Hank’s Queen, and being cherished that completely had to be a rush or a woman as sharp as Jan wouldn’t still be with him...
But the royalty of the insect world no longer flew, and as of two years ago, neither did Ant-Man or the Wasp.
That wasn’t a nest Tony felt like disturbing for the sake of a broken radio.
Tony picked up the gleaming bead of a cracked capacitor from the handful of parts left on the desk and studied it, frowning thoughtfully.
He heard a knock.
Tony glanced over at the door quickly, then back at the small TV at his elbow, split between four grainy black and white security camera images.
Wanda.
Tony got the door and stood there with a wry, friendly smile.
“Hello, Tony. Cap told me you were staying with him, so...” Wanda hesitated, tactfully.
“It’s all right,” Tony nodded easily, “-I’m fixing Iron Man’s armor in here, not hiding. What’s up?”
“Okay, ah... I brought your record back,” she said.
“What?” Tony blinked.
“‘Under the Boardwalk’ by the Drifters. Peter borrowed it for me last week, remember?”
“-Oh yeah.”
“Here you go,” Wanda smiled warmly, and handed the record to him in its cardboard sleeve.
“Thank you,” Tony said, and meant it.
“You’re welcome, Tony.”
“...You like The Drifters?” Tony asked, taking the record half out of its sleeve and looking at it.
“Carol does, actually...” Wanda told him, lightly.
Their eyes met over the record cover, and the ends of Tony’s mustache quirked upwards.
“I called that,” he smirked.
“Cap told you?” Wanda demanded, momentarily taken aback.
“-Told me what?” Tony asked, with increasing fascination.
“I have to go,” Wanda giggled.
“Yeah, I bet. Thanks again for bringing this back, Wanda,” Tony smiled.
“See you later, Tony.”
She turned, and Tony shut the door.
He returned to the desk, and decided to make a pendant for Wanda out of two of the prettier leftover radio parts and as much of Hank’s silver-based electrical solder as he possibly could without sacrificing good taste.
Tony was about fifteen minutes into this new project when his helmet radio crackled.
“-crkkkk-Power Man to Iron Man, come in? You get yo radio fixed yet or wha-kcrrc...?”
Tony stated at his helmet for a split-second, immobile. Then he seized it and put it on, keying the mic.
“Iron Man here. What’s up, Powers?”
“SWEET CHRISTMAS SHELLHEAD, WHERE IN THA HECK HAVE YOU BEEN?!” Luke demanded, loud enough that the sound distorted in Tony’s earphones.
“Laying low until my armor was fixed, jeez. ...I take it you missed me?”
“You sneakin’, jivin’, lowlife sonofa-” Luke began.
“-That’s a yes,” Tony decided.
---
All known or referenced songs on Tony’s jukebox at the time of its destruction:
F-11 Immigrant Song Led Zeppelin
? Iron Man Black Sabbath
? Paranoid Black Sabbath
? My Way Frank Sinatra
G-12 The End The Doors
B-3 Rock a Hula Baby Elvis
D-1 Lynden Johnson Told the Nation Tom Paxton
F-2 The Battle of Evermore Led Zeppelin
? Born to be Wild Steppenwolf
C-12 (dunno, but you can dance to it) ?
? Up on the Roof The Drifters
C-4 Mr. Tambourine Man Bob Dylan
? What’s Going On Marvin Gaye
? My Boy Elvis
? Break on Through The Doors
? Ruby Tuesday The Rolling Stones
? I Walk the Line Johnny Cash
? All Along the Watchtower Jimmy Hendrix
? Rock Around the Clock Bill Haley and His Comets
D-9 Rocket Man Elton John
C-11 Wichita Lineman Glenn Campbell
? Leader of the Pack The Shangri-la’s
? School’s Out Alice Cooper
A-10 Ziggy Stardust David Bowie
? Under the Boardwalk The Drifters
Also used:
Radio White Room Cream
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That said, again a very good chapter. I'd like to say more but I don't know what aside from 'it's so good, so, so good' and 'BURN GOBLIN BURN'.
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...I figured I'd leave the whole too-cute calm before the storm thing to speak for itself. (G)
Glad you're liking it.
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Also...
MOAR!
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And pending.
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I was a little confused by one line.
But the royalty of the insect world no longer flew, and as of two years ago, neither did Ant-Man or the Wasp. does this just mean that they're not superheros anymore, or is it something else?
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In this universe there was never a revolving chairperson of the week, and the early days of the Avengers were plagued by the question of who should lead them into battle, after it was found that Hank was not equal to this task.
Jan, though she was growing up fast under the multiple pressures of being both the Wasp and the head of Van Dyne Fashions, wasn't up to the task at that time either, and she had the sense to realize it. Several leaders were tried, but Thor couldn't be around enough, Quicksilver didn't think far enough ahead, and the Hulk was needed ...elsewhere.
Banner is still considered a reserve member, however.
Warbird would have been offered the position if she'd been an Avenger at the time, but she is actually the newest member besides War Machine.
The finding of Captain America solved Jan's team leadership dilemma decisively. Jan deals with Cap directly, and he handles pretty much everyone else.
Cap is just -that- good, and his interactions with Tony in this universe helped him integrate into the 'future' he had woken up to a lot quicker than he did in canon.
Cap's friendship with his alternate team leader Warbird helped too, and Carol lives full-time at Avengers tower. Wanda and Pietro also live there full-time. Cap sleeps at the tower on occasion and uses the gym there almost daily. War Machine doesn't live at the tower full time either, but he sleeps there about half the time, and seems to be -around- a lot, even it means he has to remain in his cumbersome armor to do so.
Cap thinks War Machine is using hanging out at the tower as a relief from Morgan and Sunset.
Okay, uh...
Back to your question though, Jan -can- still fly. ...She just doesn't do so as a full-time Avenger anymore. Tony mentions it here because he kind of wonders if Jan regrets the decision to retire, which he suspects was Hank's idea.
no subject