(FIC) IM: AA Fic 2/2

[glasgowsmiles.livejournal.com]

Title: IM: AA Fic 2/2
Author: GlasgowSmiles
Rating: PG-13
Warning/Spoilers: AU (set in IM: AA universe, but post-high school)
Pairing:  Steve/Tony
Word Count: 1,72 (yeah, a lot shorter-- it was supposed to be a one-shot but it was too long for lj, apparently)
Beta: The fantastic ellyr_in_ink
A/N: Okay, the sequel to my first fic is currently in the beta/re-write phase (depending on when I can get lj to post for me), but here's a freshly beta'ed fic set in the Armored Adventures 'verse. Why? Because skimming over an old kink meme, I saw an unfilled request for Steve in the IM:AA universe. What I wrote was too long for comment!fic, and not at all porny. So here 'tis.
Summary: As the World's Worst Title up there suggests, IM: AA-verse Tony and Steve meet.

Part One: http://community.livejournal.com/cap_ironman/510835.html

 

The anticipation had been insane. He’d kept his word; he hadn’t even told Pepper about Steve. Well, she knew Steve existed. She figured out in fairly short order that Tony had a major thing for Steve, but she didn’t know he was from the past, or a superhero, and she didn’t know that he knew about Iron Man—although that part Tony should probably have told her. He made a mental note to let her know that there was one more person in on the secret. He wanted to let Rhodey know as well, but that would have to wait until break because putting secret superhero identity stuff in e-mails seemed like a really stupid way to get in trouble.

Instead, he wrote a standard ‘can’t believe you’re not at school with Pep. Even I’m here and I totally don’t need to be’, and added a ‘big news next time I see you’. He was fairly certain the first half of the response would be ‘I can’t believe you’re not at school with me, even though you’re smart enough. You totally need to go to college if you want anyone to respect you because the board of directors will kick your ass out if you don’t get a degree’. And he wouldn’t argue; he picked Pepper’s school over Rhodey’s because it was a lot easier to just breeze through. He was just glad she hadn’t gone to MIT, then both his friends would gang up on him and he’d have no excuse...

He didn’t know what Rhodey would have to say to the cryptic ‘big news’. He could worry about that later. The biggest thing on his mind now was the fact that Steve was also secretly a superhero.

Tony showed up at Steve’s with a box of old Astounding Science Fiction issues, any that he could find with Asimov stories in them, and Steve answered the door with one of the huge beaming grins that made Tony’s brain melt a little bit.

Steve flipped through one, then motioned excitedly for Tony’s attention. “Hey, Asimov! Did you know that he and Tolkien were big admirers of each others’ work?”

Tony did, which was why he’d picked those issues out specifically. “That’s cool.” He said.

“Um, but hey, before I get carried away reading, there was something I was going to show you.”

Tony nodded, heart thudding a little as he followed Steve back into the bedroom. Like the rest of Steve-world, it gave off the now-completely-understandable feeling of being back in time. It was a little under-furnished—at least compared to what Tony was used to—but it was cozy, a quilt folded over the foot of the neatly-made bed and curtains half-covering the tiny window.

Steve gestured for him to sit, and he perched on the bed, half-wishing he had stayed in the doorway when Steve bent over a footlocker to dig for something hidden at the bottom. Tony needed to spend more time standing behind Steve and watching him bend over to dig through things. There wasn’t really a good way to make that happen, not while being subtle, anyway.

Tony recognized the costume he pulled out immediately.

“You’re the real Captain America?”

Steve blushed. “Not what you expected, I know—“

“Way cooler than I expected,” Tony gushed. It was one thing when he let his mind wander to thoughts of making out with Steve, and his lifetime of masturbatory Captain America fantasies was something else, but now that they were the same person? It was kind of like Christmas in terms of crush-worthy material.

Except for the part where they weren’t actually dating. That part sucked.

---/-/---

Spring break was not an unqualified success.

On the one hand, they found and fought a pretty epic supervillain. On the other hand, Tony was now waking up in a hospital bed with fuzzy memories of just how that went down.

Steve was there, sitting in a chair and staring at the wall, slightly red-eyed, but when Tony tried to talk to him, he choked a little on the tube in his throat.

“Shh,” Steve stroked his forehead and kept him from sitting up and trying to de-tube himself. “Hey, hey, you’re all right. I, um... They wouldn’t let anyone in with you, and—and Pepper said you didn’t have anyone who—You were gonna be alone, so I... Anyway, Rhodey and Pepper got your armor hidden, and I brought you here and said we got caught in the crossfire.”

For the first time, Tony noticed the cast on Steve’s hand.

“Uh, yeah, that.” Steve reddened, following his eye line. “Uh, I maybe smashed my hand so they’d admit me. You were gonna wake up alone! And you only got hurt like that because of me.”

Tony shook his head.

“It’s true, though. You jumped in to save me. You were almost killed. I only broke two bones, anyway, and they’ll heal before you know it. It’s not even my right hand, so... It’s nothing, really. You—Tony, you...”

Tony took in the wires and the beeping machines surrounding him. He was on a lot of support, that much was obvious. It was kind of scary, because while Tony didn’t know much about medicine, he knew a lot about machines, and he could figure out pretty well what most of these particular machines were for.

Some of them were okay; he could tell that a few were only there for monitoring purposes, and he wanted to be monitored. If anything went wrong, monitored was a very good thing to be.

The IV was bothersome, but if TV taught him anything, it was that everyone had to have those when they were in the hospital. No worries.

The fact that he was hooked up to a machine that was helping—making?—him breath? Big worry.

“You were in emergency surgery for a long time. They—they had to go in and—They said they had to give you a new heart.”

Tony wanted to reassure him, say that that sort of thing happened all the time in the future, say that he was fine. Not his first time at that particular rodeo.

Eventually, someone came in and took the tube out and started asking him questions. He knew he should have been saying ‘My name is Tony Stark, I was in an accident, I know what year it is’, but instead he ignored the doctor completely and turned to Steve.

“It’s worth it.”

Steve looked half ready to break down.

---/-/---

When they got out of the hospital—Steve should have been released far sooner, but somehow he managed to stay until Tony was out—Steve moved himself into Tony’s place and took up the task of caring for him while he recovered.

They never talked about it—there was one ‘you don’t have to do this’, but it was quickly shut down, and they simply fell into a routine together. Pepper was over whenever she didn’t have class, and luckily that meant that when Steve did have class, there was someone there to make sure Tony didn’t fall over or quit... living. He wasn’t sure what they thought they were accomplishing by their constant presence, but it was kind of nice. Plus, when the weekend came, Rhodey showed up to camp out on Tony’s couch.

Which led to Tony and his three best friends having dinner together on a Saturday night, which was really, really great, even if he was kind of in a load of pain half the time. The only downside was that Steve was in the middle of giving himself the mother of all guilt trips.

“Nobody blames you, dude,” Rhodey sighed. It was about the fifth time that day he’d said it.

“It’s my fault, though.”

“You got him to the hospital,” Pepper pointed out.

“You broke your own damn hand so you could stay in the hospital. Quit blaming yourself.”

Steve turned to Tony with the most mournful, hangdog look that Tony had ever seen on anyone. “You could have been killed because I wasn’t able to handle myself. It is my fault that you don’t have a normal heart.”

“Bound to happen eventually.” Tony shrugged.

“No! No, it wasn’t, that’s not—“

“Okay, fine, it’s true, but it’s not a bad thing. Well, the healing’s going to be a pain... but when I go back in so they can make sure I’m doing okay, I actually think there’s a way I can make it better than the original model.”

“The original model being the flesh and blood thing you were born with?”

“Yeah, those are super faulty. You can’t trust the human body. I believe in machines. Machines I can deal with.”

“Machines can break down—“

“I have never, ever, seen a machine break down that I couldn’t fix.” Tony said.

After dinner, he cornered Steve.

“Maybe it’s the painkillers, but I’m feeling pretty brave right now.”

“Brave got you into this.”

“It’s a different kind of bravery,” Tony shook his head. “You said you were the reason I have a new heart. Um... I don’t normally go in for poetic imagery,”

“Uh-huh.” Steve folded his arms. He had that ‘this better be good’ look. Tony had gotten used to it; Steve pulled it out any time Tony wanted to do something fun that the doctors hadn’t explicitly cleared him for.

 Tony twisted the hem of his tee shirt and tried to look anywhere but at Steve. “You are. The reason I... Not actual, mechanical, pumping-blood-through-the-body heart, but I mean the heart with emotions and love and—I think I love you. I’ve been kind of building towards that for a while now, but there you have it. So maybe it’s only fitting that I got a new heart because I couldn’t stand the idea of seeing you get hurt, of losing you. You would have died if I hadn’t saved you. I know I got hurt, but I didn’t die. And... Okay, I lost track of where I was going and my chest is starting to feel tight, so probably some stuff is kicking in and I should go lie down, but I believe the point I was trying to make is—“

“Tony.” Steve put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Stop talking.”

“I love you.”

“I know.” He smiled, one finger gently tracing a line over the center of Tony’s chest. “You mentioned. And...” Steve leaned in to kiss him, softly, at the corner of the mouth.

“Oh.” Tony sighed. It was entirely possible that the tightness in his chest had nothing to do with letting a supervillain blow him up. Or maybe the really, really good pain pills were kicking in.

“I love you, too.”

Tony hoped it was the really good pain pills, because otherwise he was having an intolerably girly reaction to Steve. “Awesome.”

“Pretty awesome, yeah.” Steve smiled.

No, it was definitely Steve. The hospital did not hand out meds that were nearly this good. Tony decided that he was okay with swooning just a little bit, under the circumstances.

Steve looped an arm around Tony’s waist. “Come on before you fall over.”

Tony smiled and snuggled into Steve’s shoulder. Definitely pretty awesome.


---FIN---