http://otherhazards.livejournal.com/ (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
otherhazards.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
cap_ironman2010-02-27 06:33 pm
otherhazards.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2010-02-27 06:33 pm
Entry tags:
Knights of the Breakfast Table (Chapter 8)
Title: Knights of the Breakfast Table, Chapter 8 (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: Mention of past drug use, war violence flashback, and sex.
Pairing/Characters: Steve/Tony, Harry+Mary Jane (Co-starring Peter Parker, War Machine, Misty Knight, and Rhodey.)
Summary: Re-assembly.
===========================================================
St. Vincent’s Hospital, NYC, 3:08 PM.
The coffee machine was not working.
It was basically a glorified vending machine incapable of dispensing any beverage worth paying for anyway, but it was failing at even -that- simple task. It would humm, make promising clicks, and- -drip ineffectively.
Tony gave the machine an exasperated look, and sighed through his nose.
He couldn’t go back in that room just yet. Harry was still sedated from the stitch job he’d gotten earlier, and the weight of Peter’s waking silence was even worse.
Twenty one stitches on his chest and upper arm alone. Was that lucky or unlucky? Either way, it would leave one hell of a scar. Chest-wounds did. It was less a matter of flexion than it was one of overall tension. To move, to breathe, to turn at the waist or lift an arm, all these things pulled at the skin, if not the muscles, of the chest.
Harry would learn that.
Harry would learn so many... many things that Tony would have preferred he hadn’t.
And there was not a damn thing either of them could do to change that now.
This coffee machine, however...
Tony sighed, and glanced up and down the hallway.
He reached into the main compartment of his hockey bag, barely unzipping it, and found the tool kit inside the belt-plate of his armor by feel.
Two minutes later he had the machine open, and had tracked the problem down to a clogged freshwater intake line. Lime scale in a water pipe somewhere between here and the water tower on the roof, probably. Tony shut off the main water valve, cleared the line, turned the water valve back on, grabbed a quarter to replace the one he’d put in earlier, and closed the machine up.
Dutifully, it brewed him a Styrofoam cup of singed-smelling coffee.
Tony put his tools back, and zipped the bag shut. It clanked slightly as he slung it back over his shoulder, and he glanced around self-consciously.
Nobody was looking at him though. Those who had noticed his presence in the hallway at all had just seen him repair the coffee machine, so he was a worker, and therefore invisible.
Which... was a good thing in hindsight, because getting caught breaking into a coffee machine while holding a large hockey bag containing Iron Man’s armor and the Midnight Racer’s helmet and hoverboard would have been...
Tony broke momentarily into a cold sweat, took his cup of coffee from under the spout, and walked away as unobtrusively as possible.
He made it to just outside the door of Harry’s room, and leaned back against the wall, shoulders slumped. Tony tried the coffee. It tasted better than it smelled, but not by much.
Through the door, he could hear Harry and Peter talking.
Tony drank his coffee, and waited until he could hold the liquid in the cup steady before going in.
-
Harry heard the door open, and looked up too quickly. The world slid back and sideways a little. Harry did his best to ignore that and blinked, wondering just how badly injured he was, under the drugs.
Tony came in looking tense and annoyed, and closed the door behind him. Then he searched the entire room as if checking for cockroaches.
“-What...?” Harry asked, craning his neck.
“It’s cool, don’t worry about it,” Peter assured him.
“M’kay...” Harry frowned, doubtfully.
Tony unzipped his large black and white duffel bag and fiddled with what sounded like a machine without taking it out of the bag. Colored lights played along his forearms briefly. Then he shut the device off, and zipped the bag shut.
Tony dropped into a chair at the foot of the bed and sighed, running a hand back through his hair. He looked at Harry and Peter for a long moment without speaking.
Then he shot Peter a significant glance, and flicked a quarter-inch steel nut at Harry’s forehead, fast.
Peter flinched with the effort of not catching it.
Harry -did- catch it, a difficult catch for someone with normal reflexes, and partially sedated it should have been flat-out impossible.
Tony wasn’t watching the boy’s hands though. He was watching Harry’s expressive eyes. First they widened in shock, then narrowed as the pain of the movement registered, painkillers or no. There was consternation, the wounded fear of a kicked puppy, maybe a shadow of guilt...
But no flicker.
No essential change, deadly glance, or brief emotion that didn’t match the rest.
-Harry had a chance, then.
“Ah!” Harry gasped, doubling forward with a wince.
“Harry-!” Peter began, worried.
“Relax. I won’t throw anything else,” Tony promised.
“What- -the hell?” Harry managed, looking up at Tony with a hurt expression.
“Just checking to see who I was talking to,” Tony told him, calmly.
Harry looked confused for a moment, then caught his breath. He glanced over at Peter quickly.
“I know you’re the Midnight Racer, its cool, and you’re an idiot for not telling me,” Peter listed, answering some of Harry’s unspoken questions.
Harry let out the breath, and gave Peter a very unguarded and grateful smile.
“Cool?” Tony echoed, “-after this afternoon, you’re lucky you’re still breathing...”
A nurse opened the door quickly, without knocking, and paused.
Harry and Tony looked up, equally surprised. Peter, whose Spider-sense had given him a second longer to think about it, looked over at the heart monitor.
The nurse glanced sternly at Peter and Tony, and picked up Harry’s chart, double checking something.
“You have a -very- high morphine tolerance,” she stated, looking at Harry hard.
Harry started to shrug, broke off as the first preparatory tensing flared across the nerves of his chest, and settled for an apologetic smile.
“-Do I?”
“Yes, you do,” she told him, more worried than reproving, “-and telling me what drugs you’ve been doing and how much would make figuring out your medication a lot safer. -Please.”
“Well- I tried acid this summer...” Harry replied helpfully, without really thinking.
“You WHAT?” Peter exclaimed.
“That shouldn’t-” The nurse frowned at Harry’s chart, “-how many times?
“Just the once,” Harry replied quickly, more at Peter than the nurse.
The nurse looked from Harry to Peter, and from Peter to Tony and his oddly lumpy hockey bag.
“Okay, I think it’s time for the two of you to leave,” she decided, polite but firm.
“They can come back tomorrow, right?” Harry asked, concerned.
“Yes, probably, but for now they have to leave,” the nurse told him.
“-Feel better, okay?” Peter called back to Harry as the nurse herded them towards the door.
“Thanks, Pete-” Harry paused, then looked over at Tony. “-Hey, can you guys see if you can find my car? It’s parked not far from where I was.”
“Black leather seats, right?” Tony asked.
“Yeah, that’s the one,” Harry agreed, meeting his eye.
“I’ll take care of it,” Tony promised, adjusting the shoulder-strap of the hockey bag momentarily.
“Right on. I’ll see you guys later.”
“See you, Harry.”
“Bye-” Peter raised a hand.
The nurse cleared her throat.
“Okay, going now...” Peter agreed, retreating.
Harry smiled a little, and gathered his sharpening wits for what promised to be a very challenging Q&A session.
-
Steve’s loft, 8:48 PM (same day).
Steve came home to near darkness. There was the light from outside... and a soft red glow that seemed to be coming from the window frames- -more of an impression than an usable light source. Steve tensed, senses alert.
A softly glowing yellow-white triangle appeared in the shadows off to his left, followed by the faint whirr of the armor powering back up.
“You can actually see that, can’t you?” Tony observed, skating over in full armor minus his helmet.
“Can’t you?” Steve asked, relaxing.
“Nope. I can see the glow of the Infa-red bulbs on the wall behind you, but that’s it,” Tony said, looking pleased.
Steve took Tony’s gauntlet, and walked out into the center of the room, absently handing Tony around behind himself in a circle. Looking back, he saw two small black boxes with glowing red bulbs spaced far apart on the wall, pointing so that their beams overlapped. They looked bright enough up there, but the dull red light they cast didn’t seem to carry very well. Steve caught Tony as he skated around again, and stopped him.
“-Were you testing my senses just now?” Steve asked.
“No. I put those up to over-expose the film of any camera that tries to take a picture of us through the windows,” Tony explained, “-there’s actually a UV component too... what color is the light you’re seeing?”
“Just red, but it’s extremely faint,” Steve admitted.
“Hmm. Then it could be just the glow of the bulbs that I can see, magnified...” Tony mused.
“-How was Harry?” Steve asked.
“All stitched up, and acting a little giddy from medication that should have put him out cold for at least twelve hours,” Tony replied, frankly.
“Oh brother...” Steve pushed his cowl back, and rubbed his face with one hand.
“Yeah, Harry’s going to need a cover story that doesn’t involve being a major drug addict, and I mean tomorrow morning. The good news is, SHIELD is trying to distance itself from any knowledge of the Goblin’s serum, and they know -I- know he’s been exposed, which means YOU know he’s been exposed, so there wouldn’t be any point in transferring him or making Harry ‘disappear’. ...See if you can get Norman’s notes about it from Fury anyway, though.”
“I’ll do my best,” Steve promised, making a mental note to see what Hank Pym and Thor’s friend Dr. Blake thought of the case.
That... would be the right thing to do, wouldn’t it?
So why did the thought make him feel so uneasy?
“I’ve been taking apart Harry’s hover-board,” Tony interrupted Steve’s train of thought without realizing it, “-and it’s fascinating. I mean- -it’s a deathtrap that runs on ether-ethanol, but aside from that it looks a lot like the helical compression array I was working on for a hovercraft in freshman year. -That’s what gives the board its speed. I didn’t think to tune the helix for speed, because I’d made this bet that I could drive a Ferrari across the Charles River to Boston U., and I needed all the lift I could get to keep it off the surface of the water without the use of a-”
“Tony?” Steve interrupted him.
“-Yes?” Tony blinked.
“When’s the last time you slept?”
“Less than forty-eight hours ago. Why do you ask?” Tony asked.
“You’re still wearing your armor,” Steve pointed out.
“Oh, that was just to hang up the IR projectors,” Tony explained, “-I couldn’t reach, so I flew.”
“Come take a shower with me?” Steve asked, abandoning both logic and subtlety.
“Okay, I could do that...” Tony decided, easily.
-
Steve lay awake in the darkness, his thoughts drifting.
Tony was out cold against Steve’s side, head heavy on his shoulder, dark hair drying flat on one side. The muffled light of the re-synching arc reactor was nearly steady, but Steve left the plug where it was.
Something was off. Something... cyclical. Historical. Some widening gyre that he couldn’t quite grasp.
War Machine had tracked down the Green Goblin behind his back, more in spite of being an Avenger than because of it...
Harry was alive, but Harry was -only- alive due to an extraordinary combination of luck and coordination by both War Machine and Tony, apparently completely unscripted.
War Machine was good. Too good, and now Steve knew that it was because the man was a SHIELD agent. Or working for them. Or... something.
But War Machine’s obscure loyalties didn’t erase the fact that he’d succeeded in -finding- the Green Goblin, nor the fact that he’d probably saved Harry’s life that afternoon.
...And what kind of deal could Morgan Stark have cut with Nick Fury in the first place?
“-Mh,” Tony mumbled, without waking up.
It was as good an answer as any of the rest he had gotten lately...
Steve was extremely tired of making decisions with only half the information.
He glanced down without moving, and stroked his thumb across the skin of Tony’s shoulder. Tony sighed inaudibly and settled in again, more bonelessly than before, if such were possible. He felt good there. Relaxed, but solid.
Steve folded his free arm up over his head, and shut his eyes.
-
St. Vincent’s Hospital, 8:02 AM (next day).
Click.
Harry woke up, and saw that the door was opening. Good, that would be Peter and-
“-MJ?” Harry blinked, starting to smile.
She was a contradiction, a bright flower in the middle of a film noire, shedding gloves and a long lavender scarf onto a nearby chair as she went.
“Harry!” Mary Jane wasn’t sure exactly where his injuries were, so she put a hand to either side of his face, and kissed him.
“-Whoo. Good morning...”
“How are you feeling?” MJ demanded, sitting sideways on the edge of the bed, smoothing the pleats of her skirt, and taking his hand.
“Uh- -better now,” Harry grinned.
“Peter called me yesterday, but I didn’t get the message until I got home from rehearsal.”
“It’s okay, I was pretty out of it...” Harry admitted, mostly truthfully.
“I didn’t see your dad out there- -was he hurt too, or is he...” MJ broke off, but the words ‘just not coming’ hung in the air anyway.
“My dad...” Harry paused, and folded his fingers around hers, “-you know he designed the SHIELD gliders, right?”
“Yes...?”
“Well... when the Green Goblin was arrested yesterday, my dad found out that the Goblin had been using his technology to do all those horrible things, and he... kind of had a nervous breakdown at work.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry...”
“It’s- -probably for the best. My dad’s been under a lot of pressure lately,” Harry said, not quite looking her in the eye.
MJ didn’t argue that one.
Through the door, Harry caught the sound of overlapping voices.
“-Who’s out there?” He asked.
“Peter, Tony, Tony’s roommate Steve, and Aunt May. -Oh, and there was a blonde lady in a suit here earlier, but she left,” MJ listed.
“Mmm,” Harry agreed, thoughtfully.
MJ waited for Harry to continue, but he didn’t. It wasn’t fair of her, she -knew- that... Harry had been hurt badly on the edge of a superhero battle the day before, and this thing with his dad on top of it...
Yet she couldn’t keep from comparing his vague, too-smooth responses to the ones she was more used to hearing from Peter.
“Should I tell the others they can come in, then?” MJ asked.
“Yeah. Hey-” Harry paused, retaining her hand for a moment.
“Yes?” MJ looked back.
“I’m sorry about Tuesday, I just forgot. I mean- -I just remembered...” Harry fumbled.
“You’re forgiven,” she smiled, and meant it. MJ pressed his fingers with hers, then released his hand and went to open the door.
-
Avengers tower communications room, 9:56 AM (same day).
Steve folded the computer printout of War Machine’s file back up, and frowned.
The first appearance of the Stark Industries War Machine armor had been in 1967, about four months after Tony’s return to the United States.
Tony had completed the Mark II Iron Man armor nearly a month and a half earlier, but in the press conference Morgan had held when he revealed War Machine’s existence, he claimed that an early version of the plans for the suit had been stolen from Stark Industries. This had started an extremely cold-blooded conflict between Morgan and Tony that Tony officially lost in 1968, when Morgan was awarded all patents relevant to the War Machine armor.
Tony won his own victory however, because while War Machine was the officially recognized version, Iron Man had been picked up by the wave of anti-establishment zeitgeist sweeping the city.
Iron Man had apparently ripped off a major invention from a war-profiteering corporate giant, added cooler toys and a flashy red and yellow paint job, and turned what would have been the ultimate symbol of faceless establishment power into an apolitical force for good on the ground in New York City.
War Machine had faded into the background as a retainer of Stark Industries, neither flashy in his style, nor much given to speechmaking. He became a hero in his own right after thwarting an incident in London, almost to the surprise of his official employers... though they lost no time capitalizing on it. Unlike Iron Man, War Machine often traveled outside the United States, acting as both bodyguard and implied threat.
He’d occasionally been charged with property damage, and he’d put several people who had threatened his employers in the hospital, but War Machine had never been known to kill on purpose. The darkest things on his record (officially, anyway) were the deaths of two known Maggia enforcers who had been standing near a heavy iron door when War Machine had repulsor-blasted it open. Things like that, as Steve knew all too well, came with the territory.
War Machine had a lot more territory to cover than he’d led Steve and the others to believe when they had nominated him as an Avenger, however.
Tony’s design, Morgan’s (Sunset’s) money, and SHIELD’s information...
No wonder War Machine had caught up with the Green Goblin first.
-
Steve heard the clank of heavy boots in the hall outside, and put War Machine’s file out of sight. He steepled his fingers, and waited.
A brief knock, metal on metal with a great deal of carefully-controlled power behind it.
“Enter,” Steve called, without getting up.
War Machine came in, walked up to the conference table as if it was a massive desk, and stopped. He saluted, silently.
Steve saluted him back solemnly, wondering for the first time just how many of the people who saluted him in this modern age did so simply to put him off his guard.
He hated wondering about things like that.
Saluting was a pure gesture, a sign of respect for the position, if not the man being saluted. It was part of an essential tradition of customs and courtesies that kept men from becoming animals on the front lines, or at least helped them regain their sanity later. It was a physical reminder that you were still in control of yourself, and that you were part of something bigger. At worst it was a way of interacting with officers with whom you were barely on speaking terms without getting yourself court-martialed, and Steve had to wonder if that had anything to do with War Machine’s silence now...
“You know, my identity as Captain America has often required me to deceive my commanding officers and NCOs in the past. Not by directly lying you understand, but by pretending to be the laziest, cheekiest, most useless goldbrick in my platoon. In short, by ensuring that the question ‘are you Captain America?’ would never enter their minds at all. The times and the situation demanded it. The war demanded it... and I can still peel a potato in under a minute,” Steve paused, wondering momentarily if War Machine’s armor had the same joint-locking feature that Tony’s did. -He’d long suspected that the powersuiters abused this to keep from fidgeting.
“-While you haven’t actually opposed the Avengers, you did keep your involvement with SHIELD from the rest of us in a deliberate and very underhanded manner, and you disobeyed my direct order to report sightings of either the Green Goblin -or- the Midnight Racer. Worse still, you voluntarily cut off communication with the rest of the team at the start of an extremely dangerous battle so you could go off and play Lone Ranger against -two- other fliers, one of whom was our true target! Mister, I had to find out that the Green Goblin we took down in the mall wasn’t the real one from Iron Man, who isn’t even IN the Avengers... You didn’t even give me that much,” Steve took a breath.
“-Now then... the rest of the Avengers know damn well what you pulled because I had to divert Spider-man from helping -them- when you decided to take off. What they don’t know is that you were working for SHIELD at the time, because Iron Man told me that part privately. And that information will go no further unless you want it to. The life of a SHIELD agent is short enough, from what I’ve seen.”
“That is... appreciated,” War Machine rumbled.
“However. I’ve got a boy in the hospital who’s barely old enough to vote, a civilian who should never have learned you were working for SHIELD in the first place, and a motion from Thor and Warbird on my desk to turn your suspension from the Avengers into a full dismissal. And so help me, with the facts I have at present, I’d vote with them. I’m sure your work for SHIELD is important, but I won’t allow you to ride shotgun with us while ignoring my orders. It’s too dangerous. The Avengers are a team, War Machine.”
“...Are you asking for my resignation, sir?” War Machine asked, after a pause.
“I’m asking you to make a decision,” Steve said flatly, “-you can level with me about what your real commitments are and take your responsibilities as an Avenger seriously, or you can get out.”
“...Understood,” War Machine nodded once.
“Think it over, and give me your answer by ten AM tomorrow,” Steve ordered.
“Will that be all?”
“No. Take your helmet off,” Steve decided.
War Machine hesitated, as Steve had been almost certain he would.
Then, reluctantly, he reached up and disengaged the locks at the base of his heavy gray helmet, lifting it off.
War Machine’s helmet didn’t come off in one piece the way Tony’s did. The shell of the helmet slid off of a kind of guard extending from his flexible neck-armor up to cover the very back of his head. His face was fully visible though, competent, experienced, and a bit worried. Steve didn’t recognize the man.
...In hindsight, he’d been half expecting to see Dum-dum Dougan.
“All right,” Steve nodded.
War Machine replaced his helmet with a noise like the bolt of a rifle being drawn back, and a magnetic-sounding ‘chunkt’.
“I will give you my answer as soon as I can,” he promised, and left.
...Without saluting, Steve noted. Either he’d finally managed to rattle the man, or it -had- been an affectation on War Machine’s part.
Interesting.
-
The ruins of the Iron Horse Garage, 12:01 PM (same day).
Tony turned up the collar of the army field jacket he’d gotten that morning, and crossed the street. The name tapes on the jacket had said ‘Kroger’ before he’d removed them, carefully cutting each olive-colored stitch with the tip of an Xacto knife.
It was his now, and it fit. That was the important thing.
The kids he had stopped to talk with as Iron Man a few minutes earlier had taken their bikes and left, and the lot where his garage had been stood empty.
Tony paused just inside the low-walled enclosure of where the walls had been and exhaled, his breath visible in the chilly air.
“-I don’ feel cold,” Tony noted, snuggling against the front of Steve’s coat.
“That’s because you’re drunk,” Steve told him dryly, “-but you’re standing in your underwear on a cold concrete floor, and its forty degrees out.”
He blinked, and walked up a mound of rain and bicycle-flattened gritty ash.
He would be... eight feet from the corner of the tan filing cabinet, and fifteen from the front of the jukebox. And eighteen inches up.
Tony remembered hovering in the center of the garage after completing the Mark IV armor, feet together, palms downwards. Even the faint vibration of flight had felt smoother, muffled by the new shock-padding.
The jets themselves had been different too of course, the first generation he’d re-cast from the high-grade alloys of a crashed A.I.M. transport. That had been a good capture, sunk in shallow water at the foot of a secluded cliff just upstate. When he’d wanted more parts off the thing all he had to do was raise it with his repulsors... Tony had used about a third of the metals over time, but then one day he’d gone back, and the wreck just hadn’t been there anymore.
He stepped down off the mound, and walked up to a pile of brittle, crumbled cinderblock at the foot of the wall where his workbench had stood.
Had it burned before the upper wall caved in, or after?
White-hot flames. Pale blue, and incandescent orange. Glowing like the thin tungsten filament in a light bulb magnified a hundredfold. Heat that would vaporize flesh almost as fast as it burned.
How fast?
How soon was it, before the string of red hole-punched Frisbees hung across the ceiling at the back of the garage began to melt, and stretch, and catch fire one by one, splashes of molten plastic vanishing in the hotter blaze below? Had they deflected and begun to melt together first, or had they burned too fast?
Peter’s photo-developing chemicals- -had he left them under the sink again, or had they been in the hazmat locker? Photo paper...
Photographs.
Pictures of each motorcycle Steve had custom painted had been on this wall. ...Did Peter still have the negatives?
Probably. He might have a -lot- of pictures stored that way, actually... it was a thing Tony had -known-, but... now it mattered.
One picture on that wall wouldn’t be coming back though.
The one taken in Vietnam, of him and Rhodey in front of their UH-1D Huey, and those guys they’d flown out from Tan Son Nhut the day before. The redhead second from the left- -what was his name again?- -had tucked a joint out of sight behind the gunny’s back while the picture was being taken.
Rhodey. A flash of white teeth in the shadows off to his left during night missions, and a deep, cool voice in his headset when things got hot. Laughter, and bets won and lost, and something about taking an empty bottle to his copilot’s forehead when Rhodey brought up a subject he didn’t want to talk about one too many times, and being punched unconscious for it. Long limbs, and flat, hard muscle that could stay still for hours if the story was good enough. Hauling the man back from a knife-fight in a Saigon club, and feeling the dangerous pulse of rage under his hands. The glint of the pipe in Rhodey’s hand, and himself yelling over his shoulder at the young Vietnamese man with the knife in his own language, hoping he’d gotten the phrasing right...
Pulling up on the stick, and lifting them up out of the loud jungle into the pale coolness of a faint crosswind. Screaming in the compartment aft, but dead, dying or violently alive they were all free now, the sky opening in front of them like the hazy blue of an oil painting... just so long as none of those guns they could still hear chattering in the canopy below got lucky.
Swinging over Rhodey’s shoulder with the rhythm of his copilot’s stride, his head spinning... the paper lanterns of a festival from upside-down, a filthy dog that didn’t quite work up the courage to sniff him, a pretty girl with long black hair and an embroidered white jacket, now flirting with Rhodey, now asking him questions and laughing at his responses...
Just another mission, and then the terrifying wrench of an impact, followed by the explosion, jerking the Huey right in midair so fast-
How he’d gotten the beast down he still didn’t know.
Rhodey’s window had been broken, and he’d been stunned by the blow, so still. Tony had thought he was dead, at first... Then Rhodey was up again, and the gunny was giving him his hand, and shouting. The firing in the pale green field outside was coming closer, tell-tale ripples moving fast through the swaying tall stalks, like the dorsal-fins of converging sharks...
Tony shut his eyes tight, and breathed in the cold air of a New York winter. Shades of damp, and clean ocean air, and overlapping layers of car exhaust.
He put out a hand and touched rough, scorched cinderblock. Felt the cement in between crumble under his fingers, just a little.
Tony opened his eyes to late 1972, and let out the breath he’d taken.
It was good to be home.
-
Steve’s loft, 4:33 PM (same day).
“Wow. That is -clean-,” Tony acknowledged, inspecting the damage to Misty Knight’s mechanical right arm.
A long slash crossed her forearm diagonally where she’d raised it to ward off a sword-cut. The blow had parted the tempered steel skin with barely a dent, severed a bundle of wiring underneath at an angle, and sheared through two mechanical linkages.
“It should be. He was using Colleen’s sword,” Misty told him.
“Well...” Tony thought about the tools he had at present, and tapped thoughtfully against the steel outer casing with the handle of a small screwdriver. “-I can get you back up to about two hundred and fifty pounds of mechanical force, but it won’t be pretty.”
“That’s what the glove is for,” Misty shrugged, philosophically. “-It will still fit under that, right? I brought my spare...”
“Oh yeah, are you kidding me?” Tony assured her, “-I just meant you’ll have to wait until I can fabricate things again for the fine work. I can patch it up now, no problem.”
“Thanks,” she smiled.
“You’re welcome,” he pressed the fingers of Misty’s right hand back further than looked natural, and Misty took over, holding them there while Tony undid a small locking screw at the base of her wrist.
“...I hate watching you do that,” Misty admitted.
“I know,” Tony smirked wryly, without looking up.
He tapped the base of her wrist judiciously with the butt of the screwdriver, and dropped the screw that fell out into a small plastic bowl on the table in front of him. Tony bent her wrist forwards ninety degrees, and undid a second, somewhat heavier screw now exposed along the back of her wrist.
Misty’s catlike light brown eyes wandered over the rest of the loft. The long rectangular room was now home to a scattering of brass and bronze-bodied lamps. No two lamps were the same, but when taken together they all seemed to belong, gleaming dull gold against the smooth wooden floor, and contrasting with the deep red brick of the walls.
The furniture in the room looked modern, and most of it was distributed logically along one side or the other, leaving a wide open space down the middle that reminded her of Danny’s workout room. There was a large bed at the end of the room, standing a few feet away from the wall at an angle, as if waiting for the pile of cardboard boxes huddled there to move.
Tony removed the second retaining screw, pulled Misty’s smooth metal hand out of the wrist-joint about half an inch, and twisted the whole assembly around a hundred and eighty degrees, exposing the electrical connectors.
Misty sighed uncomfortably and looked away again, chin in hand.
“It looks like you and Steve are really getting this place sorted out,” she observed.
“Uh-huh,” Tony responded absently, tilting a gooseneck lamp closer to disconnect Misty’s tactile pressure feedback sensors.
“You’ve been with him what, over a year now?” She asked.
Tony paused, and glanced up quickly before looking back down into the workings of her arm and nodding.
“That’s big,” Misty acknowledged.
“I know.” Tony paused, detaching Misty’s artificial hand entirely, and pressing in the flat stud on the inner radial frame that unlocked her outer arm-casing. “So... how much did you win?”
“I didn’t bet,” Misty replied frankly, “-but Colleen won a hundred and fifty bucks.”
“-Good,” Tony decided, with a note of satisfaction.
-
Avengers Tower, upper living room, 6:23 PM (same day).
War Machine waited, facing the floor to ceiling windows that ran the length of the entire west wall. A number of couches and chairs were clumped stylishly in the room behind him, but as sturdy as they looked, they hadn’t been built with eight foot tall powersuits in mind. The sun didn’t discriminate however, hanging low along the horizon beneath a magnificent pile of red-orange clouds.
The elevator behind War Machine opened with a low chime, and Steve came in. He was in costume, and the light from the window turned the white star across his chest a deep saffron color. He stopped in front of the window beside War Machine, then reached up and pushed his cowl down. Steve looked no less formidable unmasked, and the setting sun added shadows to the strong angles of his face, making him look older.
“That,” he said, looking out over the skyline below, “-is a great city.”
“Indeed,” War Machine agreed, in his mechanical rumble.
“...Have you decided, then?” Steve asked, looking into the shadowed eyeslits of War Machine’s helmet as though he could see through the rest of the metal as well now.
“I have. Or rather... I’ve defined the problem.”
Steve waited, listening.
“I am employed by Morgan and Sunset Stark, but I’m also there to keep an eye on them, and act as a deterrent to... mistakes.”
“Until recently,” Steve observed.
The sun dipped lower, casting the skyline into shadow and flame.
“Yes,” War Machine told him candidly, “-your nomination of me was too tempting, on both fronts. The Starks wanted the prestige, and to be rid of me, and SHIELD wanted a man inside the Avengers more than they needed one watching SI full time.”
“Why tell me this now?” Steve asked.
“Because I have already failed SHIELD, critically. I know as well as you do that the microwave beam fired from the roof of the SI complex at Iron Man was both deadly and real, but until that moment, I wasn’t aware it existed.” War Machine paused for a moment, then continued, “-understand me Captain, I would stay an Avenger if I could. But this is not the best time to leave Stark Industries without a watchdog, and as far as Colonel Fury is concerned, my mission here ended when I revealed my involvement with SHIELD to Iron Man to regain custody of Norman Osborne.”
“Is that why you revealed it?
“Yes. With the technology director recaptured, there was no longer a legitimate reason for me to remain here,” War Machine replied, carefully.
Steve nodded, hearing both what was being said and what wasn’t.
“I’m placing you on an indefinite leave of absence,” he decided, “-you did disobey my orders several times, and Stark Industries should thank their lucky stars I don’t dismiss you publicly. However...” Steve shot War Machine a tight smile, and reached up to put his hand on the back of a thick steel shoulder-plate, “-between you and me, you’re welcome to come back here any time, Avenger.”
“Thank you, Captain. ...I’ll keep that in mind.”
-
Steve’s loft, 7:20 PM (same day).
‘The eastern world it is explodin',
Violence flarin', bullets loadin',
You're old enough to kill but not for votin',
You don't believe in war, but what's that gun you're totin'-’
Steve broke the seal on his pack of drawing pencils, and shook four of them out of the cardboard box.
‘-And even the Jordan river has bodies floatin',
But you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction-’
He sharpened them, releasing the scent of graphite, charcoal, and cedar.
‘-Don't you understand, what I'm trying to say?
Nn, Can't you feel the fears that I'm feeling today?
If the button is pushed, there's no running away,
There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave-’
India rubber. Putty. Paper. Slipsheet.
‘-Take a look around you, boy, it's bound to scare you, boy,
And you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction-’
Steve borrowed Tony’s right-angle ruler from the long folding table that had mysteriously appeared in the far corner of the kitchen, picking it carefully out of a gleaming array of disassembled hoverboard parts.
He set the corner a handbreadth from the lower left corner of his paper, and used the whole length of the metal, drawing two straight, bold lines. Steve pictured his subject in his mind’s eye, and turned the ruler around, moving it against the first two lines until the proportions of the frame looked right. He chose his moment, then drew the upper and right-hand sides of the frame in lighter. Steve set the ruler aside, and began sketching.
He’d barely begun when the door opened. Tony came in looking windblown and carrying a full brown paper bag in each arm. He shut the door with his back.
“Whoo. It’s got to be almost thirty knots out there...”
He set the bags down on the kitchen counter. One sounded ceramic, the other more muffled.
‘-Hate your next-door-neighbour, but don't forget to say grace,
And you tell me over and over and over and over again my friend,
you don't believe we're on the eve of-’
Tony listened, surprised. He’d been adding records to the three that had survived the fire here and there, but this was one Misty had brought over earlier on Danny’s behalf. Barry McGuire’s ‘Eve of Destruction’ had come along with a blessed infusion of Led Zeppelin, a couple of James Brown and Jerry Lee Lewis singles Tony suspected were actually Luke’s, and the The Amboy Dukes’ ‘Journey to the Center of the Mind’, which was NOT about exploring meditation states, no matter what Danny had been told at the record store...
Steve knew ‘Eve of Destruction’ from the jukebox though, and in the past he’d never cared for it.
‘-destruction. mmm, no, no.
you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction...’
“Fun day at the office?” Tony guessed, wryly.
“Yes, actually,” Steve replied seriously, smiling at him.
Tony came over, unsnapping his field jacket.
“I thought you didn’t like this song,” he said, making it a question.
“I do now,” Steve told him.
“-Why?” Tony asked.
“Because-” Steve reached over for the knotted loop of green paracord that had replaced the jacket’s cloth zipper-pull and unzipped it, “-it’s not real anymore.”
“-What?” Tony blinked, letting him.
“It’s time has passed. Think about it,” Steve said, curling his fingers around the lapels of the jacket and drawing Tony down for a kiss.
Snatches of the gritty lyrics in question mixed strangely with the sudden warmth of Steve’s lips on his.
Three seconds after Steve let him breathe, he had it.
“...Eighteen. You can vote at eighteen now,” Tony realized, catching his breath.
“Exactly,” Steve smiled.
“It’s obsolete...”
“Yeah...” Steve slid his hands around the small of Tony’s back, warm under the envelope of the jacket.
“-Hold that thought,” Tony said, his mouth a little dry. He strode to the record player, and started the song over. “-Now...”
-
“You’re really tense...” Steve observed, rubbing a knot along Tony’s shoulderblade.
“It’s- -been a long week,” Tony pointed out, vaguely.
The fingers of Steve’s other hand shifted, the first two curling a little.
Tony’s breath caught momentarily, and his hand closed through the short blonde hair at the back of Steve’s neck, on nothing.
Steve had big hands, smoother-skinned than Tony’s, with a slightly unusual pattern of leathery callous along the fingertips of his right hand from shield-throwing. Controlling the minute changes in speed, torque, or release angle, that made it fly instead of just fire...
Steve was good with that hand. ...And with his other one.
Tony shifted across Steve’s lap impatiently, and pressed his forehead against the top of the blonde’s shoulder, eyes shut. He -hated- that he couldn’t do much yet. If he could just concentrate, just-
“-Oh-...” Tony’s forehead creased, lips just parted.
“Hi,” Steve whispered.
“-Mmm,” Tony murmured, approvingly.
Steve’s hands moved in a pattern that echoed, an asymmetrical counterpoint of greater and lesser force, careful inside and just a little -too- hard across the muscles of his shoulders.
It was a distraction. A slow burn. A promise.
Tony could feel a slight tremor in Steve’s chest, belying his calm, careful hands. Tony couldn’t help him. Not yet.
Consciously, he evened out his breathing and just -felt- what Steve was doing to him, holding onto the cadence of his breath, and nothing else. Damn... he was close already, but-
“Nhh. -Yeah...”
Time narrowed to ‘not now’, but not forever.
-
Steve’s hands gripping low and steady around the base of Tony’s chest, and a feeling that drove the air from his lungs. A deep shiver that he could almost taste, and Steve’s eyes focused intently up into his. Fascinated, affectionate, impatient, and hungry in a way Tony seriously doubted the blonde was aware of.
This was the edge across which the two men Steve -was- blurred.
Tony began rocking a little, not really moving yet but not quite able to stay still either...
Steve shut his eyes, and swore softly under his breath.
Tony flexed around him, pushing back a bit harder, and smiled down speculatively, eyes lidded. Should he make Steve elaborate on that statement...?
-No. ...Later, maybe.
For now he rode, smoothly, hard, and well.
Tingling, like champagne bubbles along the surface of his skin. Heat that his body couldn’t contain. Steve’s hands, plying him. Stroking, and anchoring him. Trying to help, and -fucking- their rhythm, and then getting it, and oh, God...
Together now, nothing fancy, strength meeting strength in a rolling snap that set Tony’s teeth on edge, made his breath come in deep, sharp-edged gasps. Then a shift in the angle, and he was leaning further forward than he meant to. A strike that grayed out his vision, but didn’t quite finish him... Two...
Then Tony’s hands were braced hard around Steve’s upper arms, palms slipping with sweat, and he was arching down, back, something-
Steve was rocking up into him now, eyes unfocused, searching, making the syllables of his name a language...
And then Steve -touched- him, with those hands, and Tony lost it with a shout that came back from the bricks, eyes tight shut. His hips were still moving, he’d forgotten how to stop, or maybe it was Steve moving -him-, and it didn’t matter, he was coming and taking Steve down with him, and at the end it...
Relief flooded Tony’s system, dropping him. He slumped forwards, head against his arms on Steve’s chest. Steve was still trembling slightly, one hand uncurling to stroke Tony’s back and gather him closer as they caught their breath.
“...D’ I break you?” Tony panted, head still down.
“Nope. ...Try again.”
“-Gimmie a minute,” Tony mumbled happily, without moving.
Steve ran his fingers through the back of Tony’s hair, and smiled.
---
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: Mention of past drug use, war violence flashback, and sex.
Pairing/Characters: Steve/Tony, Harry+Mary Jane (Co-starring Peter Parker, War Machine, Misty Knight, and Rhodey.)
Summary: Re-assembly.
===========================================================
St. Vincent’s Hospital, NYC, 3:08 PM.
The coffee machine was not working.
It was basically a glorified vending machine incapable of dispensing any beverage worth paying for anyway, but it was failing at even -that- simple task. It would humm, make promising clicks, and- -drip ineffectively.
Tony gave the machine an exasperated look, and sighed through his nose.
He couldn’t go back in that room just yet. Harry was still sedated from the stitch job he’d gotten earlier, and the weight of Peter’s waking silence was even worse.
Twenty one stitches on his chest and upper arm alone. Was that lucky or unlucky? Either way, it would leave one hell of a scar. Chest-wounds did. It was less a matter of flexion than it was one of overall tension. To move, to breathe, to turn at the waist or lift an arm, all these things pulled at the skin, if not the muscles, of the chest.
Harry would learn that.
Harry would learn so many... many things that Tony would have preferred he hadn’t.
And there was not a damn thing either of them could do to change that now.
This coffee machine, however...
Tony sighed, and glanced up and down the hallway.
He reached into the main compartment of his hockey bag, barely unzipping it, and found the tool kit inside the belt-plate of his armor by feel.
Two minutes later he had the machine open, and had tracked the problem down to a clogged freshwater intake line. Lime scale in a water pipe somewhere between here and the water tower on the roof, probably. Tony shut off the main water valve, cleared the line, turned the water valve back on, grabbed a quarter to replace the one he’d put in earlier, and closed the machine up.
Dutifully, it brewed him a Styrofoam cup of singed-smelling coffee.
Tony put his tools back, and zipped the bag shut. It clanked slightly as he slung it back over his shoulder, and he glanced around self-consciously.
Nobody was looking at him though. Those who had noticed his presence in the hallway at all had just seen him repair the coffee machine, so he was a worker, and therefore invisible.
Which... was a good thing in hindsight, because getting caught breaking into a coffee machine while holding a large hockey bag containing Iron Man’s armor and the Midnight Racer’s helmet and hoverboard would have been...
Tony broke momentarily into a cold sweat, took his cup of coffee from under the spout, and walked away as unobtrusively as possible.
He made it to just outside the door of Harry’s room, and leaned back against the wall, shoulders slumped. Tony tried the coffee. It tasted better than it smelled, but not by much.
Through the door, he could hear Harry and Peter talking.
Tony drank his coffee, and waited until he could hold the liquid in the cup steady before going in.
-
Harry heard the door open, and looked up too quickly. The world slid back and sideways a little. Harry did his best to ignore that and blinked, wondering just how badly injured he was, under the drugs.
Tony came in looking tense and annoyed, and closed the door behind him. Then he searched the entire room as if checking for cockroaches.
“-What...?” Harry asked, craning his neck.
“It’s cool, don’t worry about it,” Peter assured him.
“M’kay...” Harry frowned, doubtfully.
Tony unzipped his large black and white duffel bag and fiddled with what sounded like a machine without taking it out of the bag. Colored lights played along his forearms briefly. Then he shut the device off, and zipped the bag shut.
Tony dropped into a chair at the foot of the bed and sighed, running a hand back through his hair. He looked at Harry and Peter for a long moment without speaking.
Then he shot Peter a significant glance, and flicked a quarter-inch steel nut at Harry’s forehead, fast.
Peter flinched with the effort of not catching it.
Harry -did- catch it, a difficult catch for someone with normal reflexes, and partially sedated it should have been flat-out impossible.
Tony wasn’t watching the boy’s hands though. He was watching Harry’s expressive eyes. First they widened in shock, then narrowed as the pain of the movement registered, painkillers or no. There was consternation, the wounded fear of a kicked puppy, maybe a shadow of guilt...
But no flicker.
No essential change, deadly glance, or brief emotion that didn’t match the rest.
-Harry had a chance, then.
“Ah!” Harry gasped, doubling forward with a wince.
“Harry-!” Peter began, worried.
“Relax. I won’t throw anything else,” Tony promised.
“What- -the hell?” Harry managed, looking up at Tony with a hurt expression.
“Just checking to see who I was talking to,” Tony told him, calmly.
Harry looked confused for a moment, then caught his breath. He glanced over at Peter quickly.
“I know you’re the Midnight Racer, its cool, and you’re an idiot for not telling me,” Peter listed, answering some of Harry’s unspoken questions.
Harry let out the breath, and gave Peter a very unguarded and grateful smile.
“Cool?” Tony echoed, “-after this afternoon, you’re lucky you’re still breathing...”
A nurse opened the door quickly, without knocking, and paused.
Harry and Tony looked up, equally surprised. Peter, whose Spider-sense had given him a second longer to think about it, looked over at the heart monitor.
The nurse glanced sternly at Peter and Tony, and picked up Harry’s chart, double checking something.
“You have a -very- high morphine tolerance,” she stated, looking at Harry hard.
Harry started to shrug, broke off as the first preparatory tensing flared across the nerves of his chest, and settled for an apologetic smile.
“-Do I?”
“Yes, you do,” she told him, more worried than reproving, “-and telling me what drugs you’ve been doing and how much would make figuring out your medication a lot safer. -Please.”
“Well- I tried acid this summer...” Harry replied helpfully, without really thinking.
“You WHAT?” Peter exclaimed.
“That shouldn’t-” The nurse frowned at Harry’s chart, “-how many times?
“Just the once,” Harry replied quickly, more at Peter than the nurse.
The nurse looked from Harry to Peter, and from Peter to Tony and his oddly lumpy hockey bag.
“Okay, I think it’s time for the two of you to leave,” she decided, polite but firm.
“They can come back tomorrow, right?” Harry asked, concerned.
“Yes, probably, but for now they have to leave,” the nurse told him.
“-Feel better, okay?” Peter called back to Harry as the nurse herded them towards the door.
“Thanks, Pete-” Harry paused, then looked over at Tony. “-Hey, can you guys see if you can find my car? It’s parked not far from where I was.”
“Black leather seats, right?” Tony asked.
“Yeah, that’s the one,” Harry agreed, meeting his eye.
“I’ll take care of it,” Tony promised, adjusting the shoulder-strap of the hockey bag momentarily.
“Right on. I’ll see you guys later.”
“See you, Harry.”
“Bye-” Peter raised a hand.
The nurse cleared her throat.
“Okay, going now...” Peter agreed, retreating.
Harry smiled a little, and gathered his sharpening wits for what promised to be a very challenging Q&A session.
-
Steve’s loft, 8:48 PM (same day).
Steve came home to near darkness. There was the light from outside... and a soft red glow that seemed to be coming from the window frames- -more of an impression than an usable light source. Steve tensed, senses alert.
A softly glowing yellow-white triangle appeared in the shadows off to his left, followed by the faint whirr of the armor powering back up.
“You can actually see that, can’t you?” Tony observed, skating over in full armor minus his helmet.
“Can’t you?” Steve asked, relaxing.
“Nope. I can see the glow of the Infa-red bulbs on the wall behind you, but that’s it,” Tony said, looking pleased.
Steve took Tony’s gauntlet, and walked out into the center of the room, absently handing Tony around behind himself in a circle. Looking back, he saw two small black boxes with glowing red bulbs spaced far apart on the wall, pointing so that their beams overlapped. They looked bright enough up there, but the dull red light they cast didn’t seem to carry very well. Steve caught Tony as he skated around again, and stopped him.
“-Were you testing my senses just now?” Steve asked.
“No. I put those up to over-expose the film of any camera that tries to take a picture of us through the windows,” Tony explained, “-there’s actually a UV component too... what color is the light you’re seeing?”
“Just red, but it’s extremely faint,” Steve admitted.
“Hmm. Then it could be just the glow of the bulbs that I can see, magnified...” Tony mused.
“-How was Harry?” Steve asked.
“All stitched up, and acting a little giddy from medication that should have put him out cold for at least twelve hours,” Tony replied, frankly.
“Oh brother...” Steve pushed his cowl back, and rubbed his face with one hand.
“Yeah, Harry’s going to need a cover story that doesn’t involve being a major drug addict, and I mean tomorrow morning. The good news is, SHIELD is trying to distance itself from any knowledge of the Goblin’s serum, and they know -I- know he’s been exposed, which means YOU know he’s been exposed, so there wouldn’t be any point in transferring him or making Harry ‘disappear’. ...See if you can get Norman’s notes about it from Fury anyway, though.”
“I’ll do my best,” Steve promised, making a mental note to see what Hank Pym and Thor’s friend Dr. Blake thought of the case.
That... would be the right thing to do, wouldn’t it?
So why did the thought make him feel so uneasy?
“I’ve been taking apart Harry’s hover-board,” Tony interrupted Steve’s train of thought without realizing it, “-and it’s fascinating. I mean- -it’s a deathtrap that runs on ether-ethanol, but aside from that it looks a lot like the helical compression array I was working on for a hovercraft in freshman year. -That’s what gives the board its speed. I didn’t think to tune the helix for speed, because I’d made this bet that I could drive a Ferrari across the Charles River to Boston U., and I needed all the lift I could get to keep it off the surface of the water without the use of a-”
“Tony?” Steve interrupted him.
“-Yes?” Tony blinked.
“When’s the last time you slept?”
“Less than forty-eight hours ago. Why do you ask?” Tony asked.
“You’re still wearing your armor,” Steve pointed out.
“Oh, that was just to hang up the IR projectors,” Tony explained, “-I couldn’t reach, so I flew.”
“Come take a shower with me?” Steve asked, abandoning both logic and subtlety.
“Okay, I could do that...” Tony decided, easily.
-
Steve lay awake in the darkness, his thoughts drifting.
Tony was out cold against Steve’s side, head heavy on his shoulder, dark hair drying flat on one side. The muffled light of the re-synching arc reactor was nearly steady, but Steve left the plug where it was.
Something was off. Something... cyclical. Historical. Some widening gyre that he couldn’t quite grasp.
War Machine had tracked down the Green Goblin behind his back, more in spite of being an Avenger than because of it...
Harry was alive, but Harry was -only- alive due to an extraordinary combination of luck and coordination by both War Machine and Tony, apparently completely unscripted.
War Machine was good. Too good, and now Steve knew that it was because the man was a SHIELD agent. Or working for them. Or... something.
But War Machine’s obscure loyalties didn’t erase the fact that he’d succeeded in -finding- the Green Goblin, nor the fact that he’d probably saved Harry’s life that afternoon.
...And what kind of deal could Morgan Stark have cut with Nick Fury in the first place?
“-Mh,” Tony mumbled, without waking up.
It was as good an answer as any of the rest he had gotten lately...
Steve was extremely tired of making decisions with only half the information.
He glanced down without moving, and stroked his thumb across the skin of Tony’s shoulder. Tony sighed inaudibly and settled in again, more bonelessly than before, if such were possible. He felt good there. Relaxed, but solid.
Steve folded his free arm up over his head, and shut his eyes.
-
St. Vincent’s Hospital, 8:02 AM (next day).
Click.
Harry woke up, and saw that the door was opening. Good, that would be Peter and-
“-MJ?” Harry blinked, starting to smile.
She was a contradiction, a bright flower in the middle of a film noire, shedding gloves and a long lavender scarf onto a nearby chair as she went.
“Harry!” Mary Jane wasn’t sure exactly where his injuries were, so she put a hand to either side of his face, and kissed him.
“-Whoo. Good morning...”
“How are you feeling?” MJ demanded, sitting sideways on the edge of the bed, smoothing the pleats of her skirt, and taking his hand.
“Uh- -better now,” Harry grinned.
“Peter called me yesterday, but I didn’t get the message until I got home from rehearsal.”
“It’s okay, I was pretty out of it...” Harry admitted, mostly truthfully.
“I didn’t see your dad out there- -was he hurt too, or is he...” MJ broke off, but the words ‘just not coming’ hung in the air anyway.
“My dad...” Harry paused, and folded his fingers around hers, “-you know he designed the SHIELD gliders, right?”
“Yes...?”
“Well... when the Green Goblin was arrested yesterday, my dad found out that the Goblin had been using his technology to do all those horrible things, and he... kind of had a nervous breakdown at work.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry...”
“It’s- -probably for the best. My dad’s been under a lot of pressure lately,” Harry said, not quite looking her in the eye.
MJ didn’t argue that one.
Through the door, Harry caught the sound of overlapping voices.
“-Who’s out there?” He asked.
“Peter, Tony, Tony’s roommate Steve, and Aunt May. -Oh, and there was a blonde lady in a suit here earlier, but she left,” MJ listed.
“Mmm,” Harry agreed, thoughtfully.
MJ waited for Harry to continue, but he didn’t. It wasn’t fair of her, she -knew- that... Harry had been hurt badly on the edge of a superhero battle the day before, and this thing with his dad on top of it...
Yet she couldn’t keep from comparing his vague, too-smooth responses to the ones she was more used to hearing from Peter.
“Should I tell the others they can come in, then?” MJ asked.
“Yeah. Hey-” Harry paused, retaining her hand for a moment.
“Yes?” MJ looked back.
“I’m sorry about Tuesday, I just forgot. I mean- -I just remembered...” Harry fumbled.
“You’re forgiven,” she smiled, and meant it. MJ pressed his fingers with hers, then released his hand and went to open the door.
-
Avengers tower communications room, 9:56 AM (same day).
Steve folded the computer printout of War Machine’s file back up, and frowned.
The first appearance of the Stark Industries War Machine armor had been in 1967, about four months after Tony’s return to the United States.
Tony had completed the Mark II Iron Man armor nearly a month and a half earlier, but in the press conference Morgan had held when he revealed War Machine’s existence, he claimed that an early version of the plans for the suit had been stolen from Stark Industries. This had started an extremely cold-blooded conflict between Morgan and Tony that Tony officially lost in 1968, when Morgan was awarded all patents relevant to the War Machine armor.
Tony won his own victory however, because while War Machine was the officially recognized version, Iron Man had been picked up by the wave of anti-establishment zeitgeist sweeping the city.
Iron Man had apparently ripped off a major invention from a war-profiteering corporate giant, added cooler toys and a flashy red and yellow paint job, and turned what would have been the ultimate symbol of faceless establishment power into an apolitical force for good on the ground in New York City.
War Machine had faded into the background as a retainer of Stark Industries, neither flashy in his style, nor much given to speechmaking. He became a hero in his own right after thwarting an incident in London, almost to the surprise of his official employers... though they lost no time capitalizing on it. Unlike Iron Man, War Machine often traveled outside the United States, acting as both bodyguard and implied threat.
He’d occasionally been charged with property damage, and he’d put several people who had threatened his employers in the hospital, but War Machine had never been known to kill on purpose. The darkest things on his record (officially, anyway) were the deaths of two known Maggia enforcers who had been standing near a heavy iron door when War Machine had repulsor-blasted it open. Things like that, as Steve knew all too well, came with the territory.
War Machine had a lot more territory to cover than he’d led Steve and the others to believe when they had nominated him as an Avenger, however.
Tony’s design, Morgan’s (Sunset’s) money, and SHIELD’s information...
No wonder War Machine had caught up with the Green Goblin first.
-
Steve heard the clank of heavy boots in the hall outside, and put War Machine’s file out of sight. He steepled his fingers, and waited.
A brief knock, metal on metal with a great deal of carefully-controlled power behind it.
“Enter,” Steve called, without getting up.
War Machine came in, walked up to the conference table as if it was a massive desk, and stopped. He saluted, silently.
Steve saluted him back solemnly, wondering for the first time just how many of the people who saluted him in this modern age did so simply to put him off his guard.
He hated wondering about things like that.
Saluting was a pure gesture, a sign of respect for the position, if not the man being saluted. It was part of an essential tradition of customs and courtesies that kept men from becoming animals on the front lines, or at least helped them regain their sanity later. It was a physical reminder that you were still in control of yourself, and that you were part of something bigger. At worst it was a way of interacting with officers with whom you were barely on speaking terms without getting yourself court-martialed, and Steve had to wonder if that had anything to do with War Machine’s silence now...
“You know, my identity as Captain America has often required me to deceive my commanding officers and NCOs in the past. Not by directly lying you understand, but by pretending to be the laziest, cheekiest, most useless goldbrick in my platoon. In short, by ensuring that the question ‘are you Captain America?’ would never enter their minds at all. The times and the situation demanded it. The war demanded it... and I can still peel a potato in under a minute,” Steve paused, wondering momentarily if War Machine’s armor had the same joint-locking feature that Tony’s did. -He’d long suspected that the powersuiters abused this to keep from fidgeting.
“-While you haven’t actually opposed the Avengers, you did keep your involvement with SHIELD from the rest of us in a deliberate and very underhanded manner, and you disobeyed my direct order to report sightings of either the Green Goblin -or- the Midnight Racer. Worse still, you voluntarily cut off communication with the rest of the team at the start of an extremely dangerous battle so you could go off and play Lone Ranger against -two- other fliers, one of whom was our true target! Mister, I had to find out that the Green Goblin we took down in the mall wasn’t the real one from Iron Man, who isn’t even IN the Avengers... You didn’t even give me that much,” Steve took a breath.
“-Now then... the rest of the Avengers know damn well what you pulled because I had to divert Spider-man from helping -them- when you decided to take off. What they don’t know is that you were working for SHIELD at the time, because Iron Man told me that part privately. And that information will go no further unless you want it to. The life of a SHIELD agent is short enough, from what I’ve seen.”
“That is... appreciated,” War Machine rumbled.
“However. I’ve got a boy in the hospital who’s barely old enough to vote, a civilian who should never have learned you were working for SHIELD in the first place, and a motion from Thor and Warbird on my desk to turn your suspension from the Avengers into a full dismissal. And so help me, with the facts I have at present, I’d vote with them. I’m sure your work for SHIELD is important, but I won’t allow you to ride shotgun with us while ignoring my orders. It’s too dangerous. The Avengers are a team, War Machine.”
“...Are you asking for my resignation, sir?” War Machine asked, after a pause.
“I’m asking you to make a decision,” Steve said flatly, “-you can level with me about what your real commitments are and take your responsibilities as an Avenger seriously, or you can get out.”
“...Understood,” War Machine nodded once.
“Think it over, and give me your answer by ten AM tomorrow,” Steve ordered.
“Will that be all?”
“No. Take your helmet off,” Steve decided.
War Machine hesitated, as Steve had been almost certain he would.
Then, reluctantly, he reached up and disengaged the locks at the base of his heavy gray helmet, lifting it off.
War Machine’s helmet didn’t come off in one piece the way Tony’s did. The shell of the helmet slid off of a kind of guard extending from his flexible neck-armor up to cover the very back of his head. His face was fully visible though, competent, experienced, and a bit worried. Steve didn’t recognize the man.
...In hindsight, he’d been half expecting to see Dum-dum Dougan.
“All right,” Steve nodded.
War Machine replaced his helmet with a noise like the bolt of a rifle being drawn back, and a magnetic-sounding ‘chunkt’.
“I will give you my answer as soon as I can,” he promised, and left.
...Without saluting, Steve noted. Either he’d finally managed to rattle the man, or it -had- been an affectation on War Machine’s part.
Interesting.
-
The ruins of the Iron Horse Garage, 12:01 PM (same day).
Tony turned up the collar of the army field jacket he’d gotten that morning, and crossed the street. The name tapes on the jacket had said ‘Kroger’ before he’d removed them, carefully cutting each olive-colored stitch with the tip of an Xacto knife.
It was his now, and it fit. That was the important thing.
The kids he had stopped to talk with as Iron Man a few minutes earlier had taken their bikes and left, and the lot where his garage had been stood empty.
Tony paused just inside the low-walled enclosure of where the walls had been and exhaled, his breath visible in the chilly air.
“-I don’ feel cold,” Tony noted, snuggling against the front of Steve’s coat.
“That’s because you’re drunk,” Steve told him dryly, “-but you’re standing in your underwear on a cold concrete floor, and its forty degrees out.”
He blinked, and walked up a mound of rain and bicycle-flattened gritty ash.
He would be... eight feet from the corner of the tan filing cabinet, and fifteen from the front of the jukebox. And eighteen inches up.
Tony remembered hovering in the center of the garage after completing the Mark IV armor, feet together, palms downwards. Even the faint vibration of flight had felt smoother, muffled by the new shock-padding.
The jets themselves had been different too of course, the first generation he’d re-cast from the high-grade alloys of a crashed A.I.M. transport. That had been a good capture, sunk in shallow water at the foot of a secluded cliff just upstate. When he’d wanted more parts off the thing all he had to do was raise it with his repulsors... Tony had used about a third of the metals over time, but then one day he’d gone back, and the wreck just hadn’t been there anymore.
He stepped down off the mound, and walked up to a pile of brittle, crumbled cinderblock at the foot of the wall where his workbench had stood.
Had it burned before the upper wall caved in, or after?
White-hot flames. Pale blue, and incandescent orange. Glowing like the thin tungsten filament in a light bulb magnified a hundredfold. Heat that would vaporize flesh almost as fast as it burned.
How fast?
How soon was it, before the string of red hole-punched Frisbees hung across the ceiling at the back of the garage began to melt, and stretch, and catch fire one by one, splashes of molten plastic vanishing in the hotter blaze below? Had they deflected and begun to melt together first, or had they burned too fast?
Peter’s photo-developing chemicals- -had he left them under the sink again, or had they been in the hazmat locker? Photo paper...
Photographs.
Pictures of each motorcycle Steve had custom painted had been on this wall. ...Did Peter still have the negatives?
Probably. He might have a -lot- of pictures stored that way, actually... it was a thing Tony had -known-, but... now it mattered.
One picture on that wall wouldn’t be coming back though.
The one taken in Vietnam, of him and Rhodey in front of their UH-1D Huey, and those guys they’d flown out from Tan Son Nhut the day before. The redhead second from the left- -what was his name again?- -had tucked a joint out of sight behind the gunny’s back while the picture was being taken.
Rhodey. A flash of white teeth in the shadows off to his left during night missions, and a deep, cool voice in his headset when things got hot. Laughter, and bets won and lost, and something about taking an empty bottle to his copilot’s forehead when Rhodey brought up a subject he didn’t want to talk about one too many times, and being punched unconscious for it. Long limbs, and flat, hard muscle that could stay still for hours if the story was good enough. Hauling the man back from a knife-fight in a Saigon club, and feeling the dangerous pulse of rage under his hands. The glint of the pipe in Rhodey’s hand, and himself yelling over his shoulder at the young Vietnamese man with the knife in his own language, hoping he’d gotten the phrasing right...
Pulling up on the stick, and lifting them up out of the loud jungle into the pale coolness of a faint crosswind. Screaming in the compartment aft, but dead, dying or violently alive they were all free now, the sky opening in front of them like the hazy blue of an oil painting... just so long as none of those guns they could still hear chattering in the canopy below got lucky.
Swinging over Rhodey’s shoulder with the rhythm of his copilot’s stride, his head spinning... the paper lanterns of a festival from upside-down, a filthy dog that didn’t quite work up the courage to sniff him, a pretty girl with long black hair and an embroidered white jacket, now flirting with Rhodey, now asking him questions and laughing at his responses...
Just another mission, and then the terrifying wrench of an impact, followed by the explosion, jerking the Huey right in midair so fast-
How he’d gotten the beast down he still didn’t know.
Rhodey’s window had been broken, and he’d been stunned by the blow, so still. Tony had thought he was dead, at first... Then Rhodey was up again, and the gunny was giving him his hand, and shouting. The firing in the pale green field outside was coming closer, tell-tale ripples moving fast through the swaying tall stalks, like the dorsal-fins of converging sharks...
Tony shut his eyes tight, and breathed in the cold air of a New York winter. Shades of damp, and clean ocean air, and overlapping layers of car exhaust.
He put out a hand and touched rough, scorched cinderblock. Felt the cement in between crumble under his fingers, just a little.
Tony opened his eyes to late 1972, and let out the breath he’d taken.
It was good to be home.
-
Steve’s loft, 4:33 PM (same day).
“Wow. That is -clean-,” Tony acknowledged, inspecting the damage to Misty Knight’s mechanical right arm.
A long slash crossed her forearm diagonally where she’d raised it to ward off a sword-cut. The blow had parted the tempered steel skin with barely a dent, severed a bundle of wiring underneath at an angle, and sheared through two mechanical linkages.
“It should be. He was using Colleen’s sword,” Misty told him.
“Well...” Tony thought about the tools he had at present, and tapped thoughtfully against the steel outer casing with the handle of a small screwdriver. “-I can get you back up to about two hundred and fifty pounds of mechanical force, but it won’t be pretty.”
“That’s what the glove is for,” Misty shrugged, philosophically. “-It will still fit under that, right? I brought my spare...”
“Oh yeah, are you kidding me?” Tony assured her, “-I just meant you’ll have to wait until I can fabricate things again for the fine work. I can patch it up now, no problem.”
“Thanks,” she smiled.
“You’re welcome,” he pressed the fingers of Misty’s right hand back further than looked natural, and Misty took over, holding them there while Tony undid a small locking screw at the base of her wrist.
“...I hate watching you do that,” Misty admitted.
“I know,” Tony smirked wryly, without looking up.
He tapped the base of her wrist judiciously with the butt of the screwdriver, and dropped the screw that fell out into a small plastic bowl on the table in front of him. Tony bent her wrist forwards ninety degrees, and undid a second, somewhat heavier screw now exposed along the back of her wrist.
Misty’s catlike light brown eyes wandered over the rest of the loft. The long rectangular room was now home to a scattering of brass and bronze-bodied lamps. No two lamps were the same, but when taken together they all seemed to belong, gleaming dull gold against the smooth wooden floor, and contrasting with the deep red brick of the walls.
The furniture in the room looked modern, and most of it was distributed logically along one side or the other, leaving a wide open space down the middle that reminded her of Danny’s workout room. There was a large bed at the end of the room, standing a few feet away from the wall at an angle, as if waiting for the pile of cardboard boxes huddled there to move.
Tony removed the second retaining screw, pulled Misty’s smooth metal hand out of the wrist-joint about half an inch, and twisted the whole assembly around a hundred and eighty degrees, exposing the electrical connectors.
Misty sighed uncomfortably and looked away again, chin in hand.
“It looks like you and Steve are really getting this place sorted out,” she observed.
“Uh-huh,” Tony responded absently, tilting a gooseneck lamp closer to disconnect Misty’s tactile pressure feedback sensors.
“You’ve been with him what, over a year now?” She asked.
Tony paused, and glanced up quickly before looking back down into the workings of her arm and nodding.
“That’s big,” Misty acknowledged.
“I know.” Tony paused, detaching Misty’s artificial hand entirely, and pressing in the flat stud on the inner radial frame that unlocked her outer arm-casing. “So... how much did you win?”
“I didn’t bet,” Misty replied frankly, “-but Colleen won a hundred and fifty bucks.”
“-Good,” Tony decided, with a note of satisfaction.
-
Avengers Tower, upper living room, 6:23 PM (same day).
War Machine waited, facing the floor to ceiling windows that ran the length of the entire west wall. A number of couches and chairs were clumped stylishly in the room behind him, but as sturdy as they looked, they hadn’t been built with eight foot tall powersuits in mind. The sun didn’t discriminate however, hanging low along the horizon beneath a magnificent pile of red-orange clouds.
The elevator behind War Machine opened with a low chime, and Steve came in. He was in costume, and the light from the window turned the white star across his chest a deep saffron color. He stopped in front of the window beside War Machine, then reached up and pushed his cowl down. Steve looked no less formidable unmasked, and the setting sun added shadows to the strong angles of his face, making him look older.
“That,” he said, looking out over the skyline below, “-is a great city.”
“Indeed,” War Machine agreed, in his mechanical rumble.
“...Have you decided, then?” Steve asked, looking into the shadowed eyeslits of War Machine’s helmet as though he could see through the rest of the metal as well now.
“I have. Or rather... I’ve defined the problem.”
Steve waited, listening.
“I am employed by Morgan and Sunset Stark, but I’m also there to keep an eye on them, and act as a deterrent to... mistakes.”
“Until recently,” Steve observed.
The sun dipped lower, casting the skyline into shadow and flame.
“Yes,” War Machine told him candidly, “-your nomination of me was too tempting, on both fronts. The Starks wanted the prestige, and to be rid of me, and SHIELD wanted a man inside the Avengers more than they needed one watching SI full time.”
“Why tell me this now?” Steve asked.
“Because I have already failed SHIELD, critically. I know as well as you do that the microwave beam fired from the roof of the SI complex at Iron Man was both deadly and real, but until that moment, I wasn’t aware it existed.” War Machine paused for a moment, then continued, “-understand me Captain, I would stay an Avenger if I could. But this is not the best time to leave Stark Industries without a watchdog, and as far as Colonel Fury is concerned, my mission here ended when I revealed my involvement with SHIELD to Iron Man to regain custody of Norman Osborne.”
“Is that why you revealed it?
“Yes. With the technology director recaptured, there was no longer a legitimate reason for me to remain here,” War Machine replied, carefully.
Steve nodded, hearing both what was being said and what wasn’t.
“I’m placing you on an indefinite leave of absence,” he decided, “-you did disobey my orders several times, and Stark Industries should thank their lucky stars I don’t dismiss you publicly. However...” Steve shot War Machine a tight smile, and reached up to put his hand on the back of a thick steel shoulder-plate, “-between you and me, you’re welcome to come back here any time, Avenger.”
“Thank you, Captain. ...I’ll keep that in mind.”
-
Steve’s loft, 7:20 PM (same day).
‘The eastern world it is explodin',
Violence flarin', bullets loadin',
You're old enough to kill but not for votin',
You don't believe in war, but what's that gun you're totin'-’
Steve broke the seal on his pack of drawing pencils, and shook four of them out of the cardboard box.
‘-And even the Jordan river has bodies floatin',
But you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction-’
He sharpened them, releasing the scent of graphite, charcoal, and cedar.
‘-Don't you understand, what I'm trying to say?
Nn, Can't you feel the fears that I'm feeling today?
If the button is pushed, there's no running away,
There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave-’
India rubber. Putty. Paper. Slipsheet.
‘-Take a look around you, boy, it's bound to scare you, boy,
And you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction-’
Steve borrowed Tony’s right-angle ruler from the long folding table that had mysteriously appeared in the far corner of the kitchen, picking it carefully out of a gleaming array of disassembled hoverboard parts.
He set the corner a handbreadth from the lower left corner of his paper, and used the whole length of the metal, drawing two straight, bold lines. Steve pictured his subject in his mind’s eye, and turned the ruler around, moving it against the first two lines until the proportions of the frame looked right. He chose his moment, then drew the upper and right-hand sides of the frame in lighter. Steve set the ruler aside, and began sketching.
He’d barely begun when the door opened. Tony came in looking windblown and carrying a full brown paper bag in each arm. He shut the door with his back.
“Whoo. It’s got to be almost thirty knots out there...”
He set the bags down on the kitchen counter. One sounded ceramic, the other more muffled.
‘-Hate your next-door-neighbour, but don't forget to say grace,
And you tell me over and over and over and over again my friend,
you don't believe we're on the eve of-’
Tony listened, surprised. He’d been adding records to the three that had survived the fire here and there, but this was one Misty had brought over earlier on Danny’s behalf. Barry McGuire’s ‘Eve of Destruction’ had come along with a blessed infusion of Led Zeppelin, a couple of James Brown and Jerry Lee Lewis singles Tony suspected were actually Luke’s, and the The Amboy Dukes’ ‘Journey to the Center of the Mind’, which was NOT about exploring meditation states, no matter what Danny had been told at the record store...
Steve knew ‘Eve of Destruction’ from the jukebox though, and in the past he’d never cared for it.
‘-destruction. mmm, no, no.
you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction...’
“Fun day at the office?” Tony guessed, wryly.
“Yes, actually,” Steve replied seriously, smiling at him.
Tony came over, unsnapping his field jacket.
“I thought you didn’t like this song,” he said, making it a question.
“I do now,” Steve told him.
“-Why?” Tony asked.
“Because-” Steve reached over for the knotted loop of green paracord that had replaced the jacket’s cloth zipper-pull and unzipped it, “-it’s not real anymore.”
“-What?” Tony blinked, letting him.
“It’s time has passed. Think about it,” Steve said, curling his fingers around the lapels of the jacket and drawing Tony down for a kiss.
Snatches of the gritty lyrics in question mixed strangely with the sudden warmth of Steve’s lips on his.
Three seconds after Steve let him breathe, he had it.
“...Eighteen. You can vote at eighteen now,” Tony realized, catching his breath.
“Exactly,” Steve smiled.
“It’s obsolete...”
“Yeah...” Steve slid his hands around the small of Tony’s back, warm under the envelope of the jacket.
“-Hold that thought,” Tony said, his mouth a little dry. He strode to the record player, and started the song over. “-Now...”
-
“You’re really tense...” Steve observed, rubbing a knot along Tony’s shoulderblade.
“It’s- -been a long week,” Tony pointed out, vaguely.
The fingers of Steve’s other hand shifted, the first two curling a little.
Tony’s breath caught momentarily, and his hand closed through the short blonde hair at the back of Steve’s neck, on nothing.
Steve had big hands, smoother-skinned than Tony’s, with a slightly unusual pattern of leathery callous along the fingertips of his right hand from shield-throwing. Controlling the minute changes in speed, torque, or release angle, that made it fly instead of just fire...
Steve was good with that hand. ...And with his other one.
Tony shifted across Steve’s lap impatiently, and pressed his forehead against the top of the blonde’s shoulder, eyes shut. He -hated- that he couldn’t do much yet. If he could just concentrate, just-
“-Oh-...” Tony’s forehead creased, lips just parted.
“Hi,” Steve whispered.
“-Mmm,” Tony murmured, approvingly.
Steve’s hands moved in a pattern that echoed, an asymmetrical counterpoint of greater and lesser force, careful inside and just a little -too- hard across the muscles of his shoulders.
It was a distraction. A slow burn. A promise.
Tony could feel a slight tremor in Steve’s chest, belying his calm, careful hands. Tony couldn’t help him. Not yet.
Consciously, he evened out his breathing and just -felt- what Steve was doing to him, holding onto the cadence of his breath, and nothing else. Damn... he was close already, but-
“Nhh. -Yeah...”
Time narrowed to ‘not now’, but not forever.
-
Steve’s hands gripping low and steady around the base of Tony’s chest, and a feeling that drove the air from his lungs. A deep shiver that he could almost taste, and Steve’s eyes focused intently up into his. Fascinated, affectionate, impatient, and hungry in a way Tony seriously doubted the blonde was aware of.
This was the edge across which the two men Steve -was- blurred.
Tony began rocking a little, not really moving yet but not quite able to stay still either...
Steve shut his eyes, and swore softly under his breath.
Tony flexed around him, pushing back a bit harder, and smiled down speculatively, eyes lidded. Should he make Steve elaborate on that statement...?
-No. ...Later, maybe.
For now he rode, smoothly, hard, and well.
Tingling, like champagne bubbles along the surface of his skin. Heat that his body couldn’t contain. Steve’s hands, plying him. Stroking, and anchoring him. Trying to help, and -fucking- their rhythm, and then getting it, and oh, God...
Together now, nothing fancy, strength meeting strength in a rolling snap that set Tony’s teeth on edge, made his breath come in deep, sharp-edged gasps. Then a shift in the angle, and he was leaning further forward than he meant to. A strike that grayed out his vision, but didn’t quite finish him... Two...
Then Tony’s hands were braced hard around Steve’s upper arms, palms slipping with sweat, and he was arching down, back, something-
Steve was rocking up into him now, eyes unfocused, searching, making the syllables of his name a language...
And then Steve -touched- him, with those hands, and Tony lost it with a shout that came back from the bricks, eyes tight shut. His hips were still moving, he’d forgotten how to stop, or maybe it was Steve moving -him-, and it didn’t matter, he was coming and taking Steve down with him, and at the end it...
Relief flooded Tony’s system, dropping him. He slumped forwards, head against his arms on Steve’s chest. Steve was still trembling slightly, one hand uncurling to stroke Tony’s back and gather him closer as they caught their breath.
“...D’ I break you?” Tony panted, head still down.
“Nope. ...Try again.”
“-Gimmie a minute,” Tony mumbled happily, without moving.
Steve ran his fingers through the back of Tony’s hair, and smiled.
---
no subject
My favorite is Tony returning to his garage though. Great scene. I really like how you insert the 'that happened before' informations.
no subject
no subject
because I’d made this bet that I could drive a Ferrari across the Charles River to Boston U.
My first thought when I read this was about where the best spot on the Charles to try this might be. My second was to check and see if someone actually already has tried this.
no subject
And not as far as I know, but that was the first thing that crossed my mind when -I- saw Greek Rock, and MIT across the river...
'Wow. what a flat, slow river. I wonder if it would be possible to- (etc.)'
I use this bet as a permanent part of my Tony-canon. Any universe I write where he -was- a freshman at MIT, this bet was made. (G)
no subject
no subject
no subject
-Though this next chapter may or may not be a weekend-release. RL.
Still, I came back from the space slug incident okay... (G)
no subject
no subject
And thanks.
no subject
It's the little things like this that really cement Steve's characterization. In fact, reading this chapter, I realize there's quite a lot of Steve in here; he seems to be carrying the bulk of the War Machine thread. Which makes sense, since when Tony and War Machine come into direct contact, it always seems to be a catalyst or a harbinger for something. This is an interesting effect. The dynamic between the two powersuiters is both literally and figuratively explosive--and they seem to be at least subconsciously aware of it.
Man, I can't wait to find out who's in there. (Guess of the day: Bucky! Wait, no, he took his helmet off in front of Steve and chaos didn't ensue. Curses, back to the drawing board.)
Speaking of Steve, though: you are aware that I think you write a great Tony, but now I'm telling you that your Steve voice is equally awesome. His dialogue (which, interestingly, LJ tells me I spelled wrong; LJ is full of such lawls) when he's dressing down War Machine is some of the most perfect I've ever seen for Cap.
For reference, one thing I just noticed is that using both italics and -dashes- to indicate emphasis on words reads a little inconsistent. It clearly hasn't bothered me before, however, so do as you like with that observation.
no subject
He has a very broad scope of things he's involved in, and writing Steve means keeping all those things together as an overview at once.
But I like him.
Funny you should mention the harbinger thing.
I... hadn't noticed that. Just sort of IS. I think it was more of a function of how much they tend to avoid each other -aside- from crisis situations, but now that I see the effect, I may use it. (G) Hmm.
War machine is who he is. Whoever he is, Steve didn't recognize his face...
And noted on the italics/dashes.
no subject
no subject