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cap_ironman2011-12-27 12:03 am
cap_ironman_fe) wrote in cap_ironman2011-12-27 12:03 am
Entry tags:
Happy Holidays, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
marinarusalka!
Title: Take This Heart for a Test Run
Author: Kaihire http://archiveofourown.org/users/kaihire
Prompt: Indulge my love of h/c cliches! Steve and Tony trapped in a cave-in, or huddling for warmth in a blizzard, or lost in the wilderness while one of them is injured, or suffering from a mystery illness, whatever. Go old-school.
Universe: 616 with just a dash of MA. Cap and Iron Man haven’t quite left their conflict behind them.
Rating: Non-explicit peen.
Words: 7,600.
Warnings: Boo-boos, ouchies, lack of Band-Aids. Tony beating up on himself. Tony being snarky.
Beta: An elusive little wombat.
"Right below us is the valley we were talking about, Mr Heffner. Pristine woodland, no native population or easy access paths for hunters, a thriving microcosm all of its own. I believe the current price tag is $230 million."
The helicopter dipped lower, easing past some high fog, and Tony had to agree that it was stunning. He’d always had a thing for a nice, clean stretch of boreal forest. While it wasn’t any part of him that wanted to get down and dirty with the wild animals (camping meant a cabin, electricity, and mosquito netting, thank you), he had to admit that waking up in the morning and breathing in air that felt genuinely wild was good for his soul.
Or his pollution-strained lungs. He was pretty sure he’d lost his soul in Mexico City a long, long time ago. Either way. A small part of it had bounced back gleefully when he’d told Steve his code name for this trip was Hugh Heffner (no relation).
Frost and a light sprinkle of snow clung to white spruce, pine, and deciduous shrubs bare of their summer leaves. He could see a few rocky creek beds, as well, and craggy hills on either side eased up into ominous-looking peaks not too far in the distance. This late in the autumn, the ground and sky seemed to be the same, steely shade of grey, with the evergreens doing very little to brighten up the landscape. Tony tapped on a screen, picking up readings from a probe he’d attached to the helicopter’s hull before liftoff. The air quality was exceptional. The helicopter descended closer to the tree line, and Tony slid open the cabin door to get a hit of icy, deep-woods scent.
"The mountains provide a natural barrier against the worst of the winter weather. That means you’ll have all the benefits of steady snowfall with none of the dangerous wind that could affect a lift systems. You did say this was for a ski resort, correct, Mr Heffner?"
Tony adjusted the mic on his headset and tried not to roll his eyes. As if he couldn’t build a ski lift that was suitably windproof for any conditions.
"That’s right. An environmentally-friendly ski resort. Solar panels. Wind turbines. Recycled water. The works. I think I want to put the lodge right up on that hill. Can you take us a little closer?"
The whole premise was ludicrous, because the last thing Tony Stark needed or could currently afford was another ski lodge in some virgin woodland. However, what wasn’t ludicrous was SHIELD getting a new base project in the works, and Stark Resilient overseeing all stages of the operation—which would provide some much-needed cash flow. Maybe Fury was nostalgic for the Cold War and insisted to Cap the Russians were a viable threat, or maybe Steve had gathered intel that made it imperative, but lately the blonde had been urging Tony to use his influence to find something suitable and suitably Soviet. All Tony knew was that after getting off the phone with Fury, Steve tended to go off on red scare tangents that sounded charmingly retro, like he and Fury were members of some sort of patriotic throwback club that nobody else wanted to validate. It didn’t matter that Fury wasn’t running things anymore: in Tony’s humble opinion, he had his hand so far up Steve Rogers’ ass it was enough to make a porn star blush.
"What do you think, Gary? Won’t this be a great venue for corporate fundraisers and black-tie events après ski?" Steve’s code-name was Gary Johnston. If the blonde ever watched Team America: World Police, Tony knew he’d have a few teeth rearranged for his troubles. That, or Steve would look disappointed. Which was almost worse.
Almost.
In the meanwhile, Tony got to imagine Steve waving his arms around angrily yelling "durka durka durka." Priceless.
The blonde man had been sitting quiet through most of the flight. Maybe he’d had a bad helicopter experience during the war; maybe he just didn’t want to be here at all. Tony knew Steve Rogers was a party pooper under the best of circumstances, but this was actually supposed to be fun: go out into the middle of nowhere, rough it in 60s-era Stalinist luxury, eat some illegally-harvested caviar, test-drive Tony’s newest briefcase suit, catch some ballet—hey, he liked ballet!—and purchase a few hundred thousand acres of uninhabitable land for a new covert SHIELD base that could conceal an underground missile arsenal large enough to take out most of the northern hemisphere.
"I don’t know, Hugh. It’s a little remote for your shindigs, isn’t it?"
That’s right; they weren’t supposed to act too interested in any one spot, but the look Steve sent his way said he agreed this was the best of the three they’d seen so far. It was the most he’d said the entire day. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad. Maybe Steve was warming up to being stuck in a tiny, ill-designed, distinctly not StarkTech chopper all damn day without ample heating and with a real estate agent-cum-pilot who was trying too hard to please.
Maybe it wouldn’t have all been so annoying if Tony hadn’t been itching to try out the new version of his briefcase suit. Theoretically, it should give him a lighter, portable unit that could withstand extremes of altitude and temperature that only his bulkier suits could match. He’d had to create a brand new reactor for it, using a palladium-ore fuel source that looked phenomenal on paper. He was two days post-retooled implant and he knew his body was still adjusting to having a new chunk of tech where his heart (or what had been left of it) had once been. Any little tweak was traumatic, and the new fuel core was a major jolt.
It meant that even prior to the trip, he hadn’t precisely felt in the best shape. The reactor went in, untested, and he wanted it out as soon as the test run was over. His skin was having some sort of reaction already, little angular lines creeping across his chest from the round metal port that his reactor plugged into. Extensive blood toxicity tests were in the works. He could always tweak the core composition if the results came back as anything other than cosmetic; until then, his shirt covered everything. The sooner he did the test run on the new suit, though, the sooner he could take the thing back out and decide whether it was worth whatever it was doing to his body for the improved functionality.
The fact of the matter was, he needed to know—and soon—just how much the improved reactor could handle. His biology was its own unique can of worms. Extremis had turned his internal organs into a veritable nest of high-speed cabling and access ports. Testing Iron Man out was a matter of international security, and US airspace had been a little less private of late. Real estate could have waited another month, another year, but Tony needed to get Steve to put him through his paces somewhere secluded. It just about made facilitating Fury’s plan worth his time.
Because there was always the off chance he could go off like a miniature Hiroshima, despite his best calculations.
Give or take.
The whole mess meant Tony felt like he was on an inexplicable psychic hair-trigger and as testy as a pubescent boy arguing with his garage band. (He’d already decided he was the sexy-but-aloof bassist and Steve was the all-American lead singer.)
"That’s what private airstrips and helipads are for. But I think you’re right; that place farther west had a nicer stretch of flat land. Did I show you the sketches for my new 400-seater super-luxury jet? I’m thinking white deerskin interior, bamboo accents, stewardesses in extremely short skirts."
Steve gave him that look, that damned superior ‘I can’t believe this is how you choose to live your life, couldn’t you be putting all your money and genius to more altruistic causes?’ look, and even though it was all fake, and everyone in the known world was busy enjoying the fact that Tony Stark was until (very) recently insolvent it got Tony’s back up every time. Once, he’d even e-mailed Steve a list of his corporation’s charitable donations for the year—only to realize Steve Rogers was to e-mail as chimpanzees were to quantum mechanics. Actually, no; Tony had met some brilliant chimps at MIT, and he was sure at least half of all primates could do better with his own corporate version of Outlook Express than Captain America could. Either way, the past few weeks he’d been reduced to pussyfooting it around Steve’s good graces. The man had been big enough to forgive him, and no matter how much that meant Tony owed him, he hadn’t rubbed it in his face. He deserved a little respect—Stark style, of course—even if he couldn’t appreciate Tony’s version of a good time.
"We can make the skirts longer, if that’s the problem. How do you feel about exposed ankles and wrists? Too taboo?"
That was when the first whining noise emerged from the helicopter’s engine, cutting off his trail of thought and Steve’s disgruntled expression, and it sounded like trouble to all of them—the pilot shot Cap a worried glance, and Cap in turn looked at Tony. Big blue eyes, narrowed, unhappy. "Just the wind shear," the pilot had assured them, but it didn’t sound convincing to Tony. Besides, the man could tell himself it was wind shear all he wanted: he was the only one wearing a parachute, since their gear added so much weight.
Then the whine had stopped, and they all simultaneously exhaled; Cap had even relaxed his broad shoulders from their tense scrunch and resumed looking out the window.
"Next time, Gary, we’ll take one of my choppers inst—"
The horrifying sound was, in Tony’s professional opinion, that of the swash plate exploding free of its moorings—and clipping the stabilizer bar. Cheap Soviet-era iron, Tony had time to think, and then the helicopter canted alarmingly. The next thing Tony knew, Steve was throwing himself at him, and for a split second Tony was positive that all that forgiveness business had been completely political and Cap was going to fling him out of an open door into the frozen wilds of Russia. Well, it certainly had a provenance.
The hard shoulder impacted with his face, making him see stars, and Tony tasted copper an instant after he smelled Steve’s aftershave. Then they were in free-fall, and they were going to die, but the ground had been exponentially closer than Tony had calculated. There was a sickening crunch on impact—branches? His skull? Ribs?—and then the world went black.
Tony.
Tonytony. Tony. Tony.
Something was moving him; actually, someone was slapping him with increasing velocity.
"Tony!"
He groaned, squeezing his already-closed eyes tighter.
"I can hear you. You don’t have to hit me again," he managed, and heard something in reply that was probably words, but didn’t make any sense. Everything looked like it was underwater when he opened his eyes: blurred and wet and blue, and he was having a hard time finding Steve’s face. Hey. We’re alive. How the fuck are we alive?
"You need to sit up. Right now."
Oh, good ol’ Cap, always ordering him around. Tony’s head spun as he tried to get his bearings. One beefy arm supported him as he sat mostly upright, and then again as he twisted quickly to the side and brought up bile. Tony had learned long ago not to eat before flights. But Cap was shaking him again, and he realized he’d started to doze off sitting up.
"Sorry, I’m here, we should call 911."
"Tony, we’re in Russia, for Pete’s sake." The blonde’s voice sounded far away. "No. Tony, I need you to stay awake. Hey." Another slap, lighter this time. "Stay awake. You need to help me. My shoulder’s dislocated, and I can’t get us out of here if you can’t help me get it back in."
"We can just call—"
This time the slap felt personal, and a little desperate.
"Ow, Jesus, when did you become so violent? Fine, here."
"The other arm, Tony." Steve sounded worried and distant, and Tony realized his pants were wet—everything was wet. He could hear crackling, like a fire, and the smell of burning fuel started to make its way into his brain.
"Should we be worried about the fire—"
"My shoulder, Tony. Focus. Please-- Dammit, sorry, no, it’s good you didn’t warn me," and it was almost gratifying, because Steve never cursed, but Tony felt around the joint one-handed and decided everything was fine. Then again, right now, he wasn’t sure he could tell a shoulder from a dolphin. "Now let’s see if we can get you standing up—Tony?"
"Tony."
His world was moving.
Tony cracked his eyes open. Everything was grey and windy and cold. It was raining, which was just miserable, and he realized the world was moving because he was slung in some sort of tarp over Steve’s back.
"Hey."
"You alright back there?" Steve asked, out of breath but trudging purposefully along. "You had me worried. Do you think you hit your head?"
"I think I hit everything," Tony replied, "there was a lot of ground," and realized that he was wrapped in a parachute. "The pilot..?"
Steve shook his head, and Tony fell silent. His hands were trembling slightly, and he looked down at them, turning them over. Small geometric lines were creeping up over his wrists like broken capillaries in the Matrix. He tugged his half-torn shirt cuffs lower, and tried to get his eyes to focus on the landscape over Steve’s shoulder.
"What about the suit?" he asked, but he didn’t hear Steve reply.
When he came to, it was darker, but the sun hadn’t quite set—not that it was visible through the heavy cloud cover. He was propped against the side of a massive pine tree and Steve was digging around in a bag he didn’t recognize. They were half-way up a hill, and he could see the smoke from the wreckage through the trees; it meant he hadn’t passed out for very long, which he took to be a good sign. The rain had turned to small, wet flakes of snow that was steadily growing denser, and Tony hugged his parachute a little more tightly around himself.
"What are you looking for?" he asked, and looked mortified when his voice came out as a croak.
"Emergency flares, a phone, anything. This was the only thing I could pull out before the helicopter exploded."
"…the chopper exploded?"
"You missed that part, huh?" Steve sounded worried, but Tony couldn’t help noticing the large gash above his left eye and the way he was favoring one knee.
"Are you alright?" He tried to sit himself up a little straighter, but his insides gave an unpleasant lurch and he stopped himself from doing any more than drawing his knees closer to his chest. Gucci suits did not stand up well to Russian winters: memo for later. One side of his neck itched, and he rubbed at it absently.
"Just scratches, that’s all." Tony must have made a noise, because Steve shot him a frustrated look. "Scratches, dislocated shoulder, twisted my knee. I might have cracked a rib or two," he added.
"Because you used yourself as my seatbelt," Tony pointed out, caught between guilt and mortification. "Jesus, Steve. What were you thinking?"
"Oh, I don’t know, maybe I was thinking ‘I don’t want Tony to die’?" Steve was giving him a funny look, and Tony burrowed deeper into his parachute. When did Cap start caring? No, that wasn’t fair: Cap cared, alright. Cared to a painful degree about everyone. The only person whose back he didn’t have was his own All-American macho one, and when he wasn’t a bullheaded SOB he was the most selfless, giving person Tony had ever met. But Cap had also been told, more than once, just how important he was: as a man, as a leader, as a goddamn national icon. No matter what, Cap couldn’t die.
Again.
Tony winced.
"Thank you," he said, finally, because anything else sounded far too biting. And then he added, "We need to get back to that wreckage. If I can get to the briefcase suit, I can get us out of here."
"Small problem with that."
"Like?"
"Like how about the fire burned hot enough to melt the entire fuselage down around everything that was inside it."
"What?"
"I don’t know what these people are using for fuel, but we’re talking a half-charred, half-melted pile of metal that you can’t pry anything out of. I thought about it, but…" Steve was looking at him again, and it was starting to make Tony uncomfortable. "I figured if you were too out of it, and I got hurt, then we’d be in a really bad situation."
Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled.
Tony tried to make his expression as neutral as possible, but his jaw twitched.
"Steve, I have this distinct impression we’re already in a really bad situation."
The blonde grimaced and shrugged, and stopped digging in the pack with a frustrated sigh.
"There’s nothing. A tarp, a box of matches, a can of inverted marking paint, a pack of jerky, and an empty canteen."
"That’s not really nothing. That’s actually pretty good." Maybe he’d watched too many episodes of MacGyver or maybe he was simply remembering the satisfaction of being Tony Stark, but ideas were slowly rolling around in his head. Even potentially concussed geniuses still had ideas. "There must be plenty of caves around here, right? We can take shelter in one of them before the weather gets any worse. Judging by how hard it’s starting to blow, it’s going to get a lot worse. We can mark our path away from the wreckage with the spray paint—if it shows up against the bark, but it should—because every suit I make has a tracking beacon that’s meant to go off if it’s not password overridden every four hours. I have that fail-safe built in in case I ever end up, you know, at the bottom of a lake or something." It’d happened. Twice. Nobody could accuse Tony Stark of not learning his lesson (eventually). "Anyway, the beacon is embedded within the suit lining, and it’d take a lot more than a fuel fire to damage it. It should kick in within a couple hours, and then our location with be relayed to Jarvis at the Avengers’ Mansion."
Tony looked pretty proud of himself; Steve looked dubious.
"We can eat the jerky and fill up the canteen with snow to make sure we have fresh water. Then we set up the tarp as a wind-break—and mark it with more spray paint—at the mouth of our cave, and use the matches to create a nice little toasty fire. It won’t be so bad." Alright, Steve knew all this and he’d definitely watched too much MacGyver; the whole plan was starting to sound like a rugged sleep-out party, and maybe he’d hit his head harder than he thought, because Tony was suddenly imagining Steve in footie pajamas. But the footie pajamas were the best part. Did they come in size Extra Butch?
"Tony?"
"What?"
"Tony!"
Shit.
The gentle crackle of a fire woke him up, and Tony coughed as the smoke got in his nose. The place wasn’t particularly well-ventilated.
"Are you awake?" Steve asked. He sounded tired and distant, and Tony realized dully that Steve was trying to gently shake him awake. Tony winced but nodded. His head was still swimming, but his eyes were focusing now. He could make out the low ceiling of the cave, its dry walls and rocky, leaf-strewn floor. There was a tall, relatively wide trail leading out to a slit of fading daylight where the mouth of the cave must have been. "I have good news and bad news."
"Good news first."
"The good news is, I liked your plan. I didn’t have a better one, anyway. I had a bit of trouble finding a cave deep enough to give us any cover, and then I had to make sure you were settled safely, and then I had to go all the way back down to the helicopter to mark our path from there. But we’re dry and I have some firewood and the jerky is pretty fresh."
Hey, things were sounding alright.
"The bad news?"
"The bad news is that the cave doesn’t go any deeper than this, and the blizzard really picked up, like you said. It sounded like a tree came down and... A tree came down. We’re sort of stuck here."
"Steve, tell me you didn’t just say we’re trapped in a cave in the middle of nowhere in Russia."
The blonde rubbed the back of his neck.
"Yeah, that um. That about sums it up."
"Shit."
"Yeah. But let’s hope your tracker thing will get everyone to show up."
Tony was already trying to scramble to his feet, disentangling himself from the parachute and feeling his wobbly way along the wall of the cave towards the exit. Sure enough, behind the half-torn tarp, there was an extremely impressive half-rotted tree trunk as broad as a small delivery truck. There was enough space to stick out an arm and for the wind to be blowing in a growing pile of snow, but even with Steve’s augmented strength, there was no way he’d be able to budge it. From the scuff marks in the dust and leaves, Tony could see he’d given it a go already.
"Tony? You said they’d find us, right?"
"Right. Unless the beacon doesn’t work for whatever reason. Or unless the Soviets are blocking certain satellite signals. Or they could come out here and not be able to find us because there’s about two feet of snow on the ground already and now there’s a tree over the entrance of the cave and—"
Steve’s hand came up, sudden and surprisingly rough, to rest on the side of his neck. The blonde turned his jaw up, and Tony tried to jerk free.
"What the Hell..?"
"What’s on your neck, Tony?" Cap’s thumb was rough, and Tony flinched from the brush of it over his jugular; he wrenched away and covered the spot with his own hand, rubbing at it. It felt overly sensitive, like he’d bruised it during the fall.
"What are you talking about?"
"Tony, come here." Cap’s blue eyes were soft, pale enough to stand out even in the darkness of the cave. One eyebrow was matted with blood and there was a bruised lump above it. Tony shied away when the blonde approached him, until his shoulders hit the wall behind him and had nowhere else to go. "You have these little lines. It’s… they almost look like an Etch A Sketch."
Oh. That.
The shorter man let out a nervous laugh, still covering his neck with his hand. If the new reactor core was poisoning him, then having it creep so far away from his chest was definitely not a good sign. The laugh only made Cap’s brow furrow, like he was wondering if Tony needed to be shaken, or whether he might pass out again. Tony didn’t like the slightly high, hysterical edge that threatened to creep into his voice, so he cleared his throat.
"I didn’t tell you, because I didn’t think it was relevant, but I needed to come up with a new reactor core to power the new briefcase suit we came here to test-drive. I didn’t precisely run all the tests on it."
"Tony."
"Yeah, I know. Look, there’s nothing we can do about it until we get back to the US, anyway. It’s not like I carry a spare reactor around in my back pocket, you know?"
"Let me see it."
Tony couldn’t read Steve’s eyes, but his own hands were shaking slightly again. Maybe the palladium hadn’t been such a hot idea. Steve was just watching him, patient and getting that bullish set to his mouth, so Tony swallowed down the retorts and loosened his half-charred tie. Since it was ruined, and he wasn’t about to be invited to give a talk on the importance of backup plans, he tossed it aside and undid the first four buttons on his shirt. The reactor glowed a dull blue, hidden under a tank top, but Steve’s eyes widened enough that Tony wished he had a mirror to see what Cap was seeing.
"My God, Tony."
Very reassuring.
Cap was very much in his personal space, the broad heat of him blocking Tony’s thought process. His fingers tentatively skirted the bare skin above the neckline of the tank top, and they felt cold and rough against his skin. He tried not to flinch, but Steve wasn’t making it easy. This was just awkward.
"Steve, what—"
"You’re burning up."
The big hand was on his forehead now, and that felt cold, too.
"Tony, your pupils are huge." There was an uneasy edge to Steve’s voice, and that definitely wasn’t helping things. He shifted his hand to cup Tony’s cheek, the back of his neck, and his expression just got more upset the farther he got. "You’re running a serious fever. We need to get you medical treatment."
Because they could just wave their hands out over the fallen tree and one of the wolves from earlier would helpfully go fetch an ambulance.
"That’s not really going to happen, is it?" Tony managed, finally pushing past him to go back towards the fire. He didn’t even stumble, but he felt sweat beading his forehead by the time he got back to his parachute. The fire wasn’t making it any easier to cool off; Tony shook off his suit jacket and the button-down shirt, and found a spot against the wall farther from the heat of the flames.
Steve approached him a moment later, crouching down to offer him the canteen.
"You should drink. If you have a fever, you have to stay hydrated."
Tony took the canteen and took a few swallows of the cold water.
"I should probably warn you that it’s likely to get worse. Judging by how fast these marks are spreading, exponentially worse."
Steve frowned.
"What does that mean, Tony?"
"It means in multiples—"
"I know the word, stop evading."
So much for trying to lighten the mood. Tony turned his hand over to show Steve his wrist. The other man picked it up, frowning at the lines on Tony’s skin.
"I noticed these around my chest port this morning when we were leaving to meet the helicopter. I thought it was just a localized reaction to the new fuel core I used, but…" He lifted the wrist out of Steve’s grasp, and gestured with his other hand at the mark on his neck. "I think I can safely guess at this point that it’s poisoning me, and it’s doing so faster and faster. That means I’m burning through the fuel core too quickly." Steve already looked concerned, but Tony had to lay it all out for him. "Judging by the lack of daylight out there, if the transmitter in my suit is working the Avengers would have been notified, and they should be here and searching for us relatively soon. We have to hope they can find us, because if the poisoning doesn’t kill me, then the reactor running out of juice will."
"My God."
Tony winced.
"Yeah, that pretty much sums it up."
"There has to be something we can do to slow down the process."
"Theoretically, there is."
"Theoretical is all we have out here, Tony." That was certainly true.
"The best thing we can do is put my body on ice. If I can get hypothermic without, you know, dying from it, it should slow the progression. You said yourself that it feels like I’m running a fever. It’s like my body is going septic, but from a toxin instead of a pathogen. I don’t know if it’s spreading through my bloodstream or through my lymphatic system, but it doesn’t really matter, since both would be slowed considerably by dropping my core temperature." It could also change the type of chemical reaction that was going on in his body, short-circuit the wiring Extremis had added, or do unforeseen things to the new reactor itself. Tony figured dead would be dead: there was no point alarming Cap with all the manners in which this was a bad idea, since this was the only realistic option.
"And this is going to give you the best chance of surviving?" Steve asked, genuine worry evident on his face. Tony knew Steve hadn’t had the best track record with ice himself, but then again, he was living proof it could work out ok.
"Best I can come up with. I can’t tell if I’m concussed or if it’s affecting my brain—or both. The important part, Steve, is keeping me conscious. That thing I said about not hitting me? You pretty much have free rein to smack me around as much as you want."
"Tony." The blonde sounded hurt. "You weren’t responding and I was trying to get you out of the wreckage and—"
"Cap, I know. Ok? I get it." He patted the man’s shoulder; it would have been natural, before they’d spent what felt like a lifetime trying to tear each other apart, but now it felt awkward. Would it ever feel normal again? Would they live long enough to fix the rift between them? Steve would, at least. "I also know I deserve a lot more than that, and with a lot more vehemence behind it."
Steve started to open his mouth, but Tony held up his hand.
"I don’t know if I’m going to be alive in a couple hours, much less lucid. I want to say this, and I want to say it once. I’m sorry. About all of it. It never should have gone as far as it did. You have no idea how much your death wrecked me. I would have gone in your place in a heartbeat. And I know you’ll never be able to forgive me. I can’t even believe you helped to bring me back." God, was he choking up? Tony swallowed it down hard, chalked it up to fear for his own life. "I just want you to know how grateful I am that you’re even willing to talk to me. I mean that. And that you risked your life in that helicopter to keep me in one piece. And if I make it out of this alive, you need to tell me what I can do to try to pay you back."
"Can I talk now?"
"Now you can talk." He was allowed to grin.
"There’s a lot between us that we both regret. If we had the choice, I think we both would have done things differently. That’s why I couldn’t give up on you. I knew that you regretted it, and where there’s regret, there’s room to mend bridges. We both just have to keep working on it. Ok?"
Shit, he really was going to lose it, but the relief was downright physical. Tony’s shoulders sagged, and when Cap offered out his hand, he used it to pull him into a one-armed hug. And he managed to offer up a genuine smile for what felt like the first time in forever. It was a pity he was going to end up dead, because this felt like it could be an actual clean start.
At least until the next time he ran his mouth and Cap started hating him again. Somehow it was always too tempting to screw things up.
"Ok. For now, let’s turn me into an icicle."
"Hey Cap?"
"Yes, Tony?"
"If I ever tease you about being stuck in the ice again, I give you permission to take one of my cars."
Snow was gusting in over the top of the fallen tree at the entrance, enough of it to provide a convenient place to bury Tony up to the neck in the snow. His hands and feet were left free, and padded with layers of cut-up parachute to prevent frostbite. Tony had already fallen asleep once, with Steve sitting across from him with a small fire going against the wall where the wind wasn’t as bad. When he woke up, Steve was sitting cross-legged behind him with Tony’s head cradled in his lap, gently shaking his shoulders. Tony hadn’t questioned it.
"Which car?"
The cold was making it extremely hard to think: Tony’s jaw was chattering in a way he found morbidly hilarious but Steve appeared to find worrying, and his vision kept swimming in and out of focus.
"Whichever one you like." He didn’t remember that they’d been sold off.
"How about for every time you tease me, you make me an omelet."
Tony scrunched up his nose, but he was so cold that it came out looking a lot more like a grimace.
"S-since when do you like omelets?"
"Since the first time you made them for all of us. Pepper mentioned you were good in the kitchen, but I thought she meant it sarcastically. I thought she meant good for…" Steve looked a little guilty.
"Good for a guy who never has to wash his own dishes, fold his own laundry, wipe his own ass?"
That got a laugh out of Steve, and the blonde’s cheeks flushed the same color as the tips of his ears. Bashful Cap was actually kinda cute, in a very ‘I’m noticing these things because my body is trying to shut down and die’ sort of way.
"Yes, something like that."
"I do actually do my own dishes," he said, squeezing his eyes shut as a chill rolled down his spine. "Sometimes. But it’s a deal. If I tease you, I make you an omelet."
Steve was saying something. Tony tried to squint his eyes open to read his lips, but it was so dark in the cave. Had it been so dark ten minutes ago?
"Tony. Tony, hey, come on, stay with me."
Steve’s voice. Genuinely panicked, and then lips against his, overheated and painfully soft, and a hard puff of warm air into his lungs. Then another. Tony came to with a gasp, his ears ringing, his entire body feeling like it was on fire.
"Thank God." Someone was putting an oxygen mask over his face, the forced air cold and dry, but all he could see was Cap’s face hovering a few inches from his. The gash on his forehead had been taped but had blossomed into a handsome black eye. Steve was talking at him, words he couldn’t make out. Tony turned his head to see what the source of the noise was, and saw someone in a flight suit.
"Another helicopter?" he managed. "You have got to be kidding."
"What’s he trying to say?" one of the strangers asked, and Steve shook his head at them.
Tony reached up—his hand was covered in tape, there looked to be at least three IVs in it—and tugged the mask free before they could stop him.
"This better be a StarkTech chopper," he said.
"Oh, Tony," Steve replied, and one of the flight medics bullied him back into the mask even as the blonde took his hand in his big, careful paws. His hands were warm, and whatever they were pumping into his veins was cold and tingly in all the best of ways.
"Not every day you get kissed by a national icon," he said, trying to raise his voice over the sound of the engine. Steve turned gratifyingly pink, and glanced at the medics as if checking to see if they’d heard.
"I wasn’t kissing you, Tony. You stopped breathing. I was helping to administer CPR."
"You were kissing me. Admit it."
"I think you’re going to be just fine," Steve replied, trying to sound grumpy despite the blush. "I think whatever they’re giving you is making you loopy."
"Your lips are really soft."
"Tony, seriously. It was CPR."
"I think I’m feeling short of breath again." Tony did his best attempt at a dramatic cough; for a moment Steve looked concerned, and then he looked angry. Which was really sort of comical with the black eye.
"Don’t do that. I was worried about you. They’re giving you medication; Jarvis sent over the results from your blood tests, so they’re trying to neutralize— Tony, what are you doing?"
Tony felt pleasantly warm, and he knew he was grinning like an idiot, but he had a hand against Steve’s cheek and his thumb touching his plush lower lip.
"Soft."
"Wow, Tony, really?" The blush was back in force, and Steve sounded exasperated. "What did you guys give him?" Steve asked the medics, who were assuring him that this was normal. Of course it was normal; Tony felt great. Better than he’d felt in days. At least Steve wasn’t shoving his hand away. That felt important for some reason.
"You guys should tell him he needs to kiss me again," Tony said, tugging at one of the medics’ sleeves. But then the other one injected something into his IV, and the lights switched off.
Epilogue
"The package you requested has arrived, sir," Jarvis informed Tony. He wiped his hands off on a rag, but with how greasy the thing had gotten he wasn’t sure if that was better or worse. It had started off this morning as his white tank top, but now it was a black rag. He tossed it in the trash and wiped his hands off on his black pants (that had started off as jeans) and then on his belly when that didn’t do the trick (neither did his belly).
"About time. I’m assuming it’s kinda large?"
"Very large, sir."
"Right, have it put in the back cargo bay. I’m going to grab a shower before I start tinkering with it. I think this grease is flammable, and you know how I am with flamethrowers."
"I know painfully well, sir. There is one more thing."
"Well, spill it." Sometimes having a computer with a personality proved less than efficient; sometimes Jarvis just wanted to talk, especially about his feelings, and it was worse than having an actual relative nagging at him.
"It appears that Captain Rogers is at the front door."
"Did he say why?" Tony asked, screwing his nose up.
"No, but he let himself in," said Steve, leaning against the doorway and holding up a set of keys between his thumb and forefinger. "You gave me a set, remember?"
Tony’s eyes narrowed as he tried to think it through.
"Was I sober at the time?"
"Definitely not." Steve came down the steps into the work room. He was dressed as casually as Steve Rogers ever dressed, which meant sharply shined brown shoes, carefully ironed khakis, and a soft-looking blue v-neck sweater over a button-down shirt. He held up a bag. "I wanted to see how you were doing. I brought donuts."
Tony grinned and snatched the bag.
"Best news I’ve had all day. You have creepy timing; that chopper with my suit melted into it like some kinda modern sculpture? It’s being delivered as we speak."
"That’s not creepy timing, Tony. One of your suits is in there. I had to escort it." Steve sighed and Tony followed him as he let himself into the kitchen to poke at the coffeemaker. "There’s the whole matter of national security thing that goes on whenever Iron Man is involved in an international incident."
"I would hardly call crashing in the woods an incident. Hey, no sprinkles?" he asked, hopping up to sit on the kitchen island and digging around for a donut. He settled for glazed.
"Sorry, they were all out. By the way, you told me on the phone that these were healing." There was suddenly a hand on his neck, and Tony flinched, not having seen it coming. Steve looked apologetic, started to drop his hand away. "Sorry." Tony didn’t know what possessed him to catch it.
"It’s alright. They’re fading a little. The new reactor’s out of my body, I have Ol’ Faithful back in here," he added, patting the blue glow on his chest, "and it’s just going to take a little time for the palladium to work its way out. Meanwhile, I get to look like a cool piece of art."
Steve chuckled lightly, poked a forefinger against his jawline.
"Your beard’s already a cool piece of art, you don’t need the extra help."
"So now you like my beard?" Tony asked, raising his eyebrows. "Careful, Steve, I’m going to get the wrong impression." He stuffed a donut into his mouth, chewing blissfully.
"I really don’t think it’s the wrong impression," Steve said, grudgingly, and Tony almost choked on his donut. Then there was a glass of water in his hand and he was washing it down.
"Say what?"
"I said I was thinking about how worried I was about losing you." Cap looked like he was going to start scuffing his shoes against the floor in a minute. "You’re my friend, Tony, but I. I think it’s more than that."
"You think it’s more than that. You really weren’t giving me CPR, were you?"
Steve looked exasperated.
"Of course I was giving you CPR, Tony, do you really think I was thinking about—"
But it was impossible to talk with Tony’s mouth on his. Tony got both of his hands right into Steve’s hair, adjusted the angle because Steve was still going from shock to relaxing into the contact and their teeth clicked together until he found the right flight path. He’d been right: Steve’s lips were soft, at least when they relaxed under his, and then the blonde let out an almost desperate little groan and Tony felt himself hauled flush against his body—in a hug.
"God, Tony, I was so worried and—"
"Steve. Can we be worried later?" Tony asked, breathless, a little agitated. Definitely turned on. "I was sort of doing something here."
"Sorry, I’m not very good at this sort of—"
Yes, the best course of action was to shut him up. Tony kissed his upper lip, then the lower one, and felt Steve’s big shoulders droop down in compliance. He brushed his thumbs over the taller man’s temples, brushed one over the cut on Steve’s forehead that had healed up so fast. His hair was soft and lightly gelled into place, which made it all the more pleasant to shamelessly muss when he got his fists carefully into it. Then Steve was kissing him, awkward and earnest, and Tony got the distinct impression he really hadn’t had that much practice. One big hand came down, awkward and uncertain, against his ribs until Tony slid closer to the edge of the counter and brought their bodies into contact.
Then he had one arm around his waist and the other around his upper back, and then a hand raking through his hair, and then he had his mouth on Steve’s neck and his hands jerking at his sweater and shirt, and Steve breathing out Tony when his blunt nails scraped up his flanks and left faint engine grease tracks in their path. Steve’s mouth found the side of his neck, like he was trying to trace the angular lines back down to his reactor, and then Tony was fumbling with Steve’s belt and Jesus, that was not for beginners, so much for that idea, they would have to work up to that, but there was nothing wrong with getting a hand around him and hearing Steve cry out, except that suddenly there was a mess on his stomach and Steve had his forehead against his shoulder and, "Sorry, sorry Tony, you tasted like sugar and grease and-- sorry I—"
"Actually, I’m just going to take that as a compliment," Tony said, breathless and laughing and stupidly happy. He grabbed a dish towel and wiped himself down while Steve fumbled with his trousers, then slid off the kitchen island and caught the broad wrist to stop him. "Better idea. You return the favor in the shower, kill two birds with one stone. What do you think?"
"I think you’re a genius."
"That’s what the paperwork says," Tony agreed, leading the way down the hallway. "Jarvis, go ahead and cancel the rest of my day. Looks like I suddenly have plans."
Fin.
Author: Kaihire http://archiveofourown.org/users/kaihire
Prompt: Indulge my love of h/c cliches! Steve and Tony trapped in a cave-in, or huddling for warmth in a blizzard, or lost in the wilderness while one of them is injured, or suffering from a mystery illness, whatever. Go old-school.
Universe: 616 with just a dash of MA. Cap and Iron Man haven’t quite left their conflict behind them.
Rating: Non-explicit peen.
Words: 7,600.
Warnings: Boo-boos, ouchies, lack of Band-Aids. Tony beating up on himself. Tony being snarky.
Beta: An elusive little wombat.
"Right below us is the valley we were talking about, Mr Heffner. Pristine woodland, no native population or easy access paths for hunters, a thriving microcosm all of its own. I believe the current price tag is $230 million."
The helicopter dipped lower, easing past some high fog, and Tony had to agree that it was stunning. He’d always had a thing for a nice, clean stretch of boreal forest. While it wasn’t any part of him that wanted to get down and dirty with the wild animals (camping meant a cabin, electricity, and mosquito netting, thank you), he had to admit that waking up in the morning and breathing in air that felt genuinely wild was good for his soul.
Or his pollution-strained lungs. He was pretty sure he’d lost his soul in Mexico City a long, long time ago. Either way. A small part of it had bounced back gleefully when he’d told Steve his code name for this trip was Hugh Heffner (no relation).
Frost and a light sprinkle of snow clung to white spruce, pine, and deciduous shrubs bare of their summer leaves. He could see a few rocky creek beds, as well, and craggy hills on either side eased up into ominous-looking peaks not too far in the distance. This late in the autumn, the ground and sky seemed to be the same, steely shade of grey, with the evergreens doing very little to brighten up the landscape. Tony tapped on a screen, picking up readings from a probe he’d attached to the helicopter’s hull before liftoff. The air quality was exceptional. The helicopter descended closer to the tree line, and Tony slid open the cabin door to get a hit of icy, deep-woods scent.
"The mountains provide a natural barrier against the worst of the winter weather. That means you’ll have all the benefits of steady snowfall with none of the dangerous wind that could affect a lift systems. You did say this was for a ski resort, correct, Mr Heffner?"
Tony adjusted the mic on his headset and tried not to roll his eyes. As if he couldn’t build a ski lift that was suitably windproof for any conditions.
"That’s right. An environmentally-friendly ski resort. Solar panels. Wind turbines. Recycled water. The works. I think I want to put the lodge right up on that hill. Can you take us a little closer?"
The whole premise was ludicrous, because the last thing Tony Stark needed or could currently afford was another ski lodge in some virgin woodland. However, what wasn’t ludicrous was SHIELD getting a new base project in the works, and Stark Resilient overseeing all stages of the operation—which would provide some much-needed cash flow. Maybe Fury was nostalgic for the Cold War and insisted to Cap the Russians were a viable threat, or maybe Steve had gathered intel that made it imperative, but lately the blonde had been urging Tony to use his influence to find something suitable and suitably Soviet. All Tony knew was that after getting off the phone with Fury, Steve tended to go off on red scare tangents that sounded charmingly retro, like he and Fury were members of some sort of patriotic throwback club that nobody else wanted to validate. It didn’t matter that Fury wasn’t running things anymore: in Tony’s humble opinion, he had his hand so far up Steve Rogers’ ass it was enough to make a porn star blush.
"What do you think, Gary? Won’t this be a great venue for corporate fundraisers and black-tie events après ski?" Steve’s code-name was Gary Johnston. If the blonde ever watched Team America: World Police, Tony knew he’d have a few teeth rearranged for his troubles. That, or Steve would look disappointed. Which was almost worse.
Almost.
In the meanwhile, Tony got to imagine Steve waving his arms around angrily yelling "durka durka durka." Priceless.
The blonde man had been sitting quiet through most of the flight. Maybe he’d had a bad helicopter experience during the war; maybe he just didn’t want to be here at all. Tony knew Steve Rogers was a party pooper under the best of circumstances, but this was actually supposed to be fun: go out into the middle of nowhere, rough it in 60s-era Stalinist luxury, eat some illegally-harvested caviar, test-drive Tony’s newest briefcase suit, catch some ballet—hey, he liked ballet!—and purchase a few hundred thousand acres of uninhabitable land for a new covert SHIELD base that could conceal an underground missile arsenal large enough to take out most of the northern hemisphere.
"I don’t know, Hugh. It’s a little remote for your shindigs, isn’t it?"
That’s right; they weren’t supposed to act too interested in any one spot, but the look Steve sent his way said he agreed this was the best of the three they’d seen so far. It was the most he’d said the entire day. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad. Maybe Steve was warming up to being stuck in a tiny, ill-designed, distinctly not StarkTech chopper all damn day without ample heating and with a real estate agent-cum-pilot who was trying too hard to please.
Maybe it wouldn’t have all been so annoying if Tony hadn’t been itching to try out the new version of his briefcase suit. Theoretically, it should give him a lighter, portable unit that could withstand extremes of altitude and temperature that only his bulkier suits could match. He’d had to create a brand new reactor for it, using a palladium-ore fuel source that looked phenomenal on paper. He was two days post-retooled implant and he knew his body was still adjusting to having a new chunk of tech where his heart (or what had been left of it) had once been. Any little tweak was traumatic, and the new fuel core was a major jolt.
It meant that even prior to the trip, he hadn’t precisely felt in the best shape. The reactor went in, untested, and he wanted it out as soon as the test run was over. His skin was having some sort of reaction already, little angular lines creeping across his chest from the round metal port that his reactor plugged into. Extensive blood toxicity tests were in the works. He could always tweak the core composition if the results came back as anything other than cosmetic; until then, his shirt covered everything. The sooner he did the test run on the new suit, though, the sooner he could take the thing back out and decide whether it was worth whatever it was doing to his body for the improved functionality.
The fact of the matter was, he needed to know—and soon—just how much the improved reactor could handle. His biology was its own unique can of worms. Extremis had turned his internal organs into a veritable nest of high-speed cabling and access ports. Testing Iron Man out was a matter of international security, and US airspace had been a little less private of late. Real estate could have waited another month, another year, but Tony needed to get Steve to put him through his paces somewhere secluded. It just about made facilitating Fury’s plan worth his time.
Because there was always the off chance he could go off like a miniature Hiroshima, despite his best calculations.
Give or take.
The whole mess meant Tony felt like he was on an inexplicable psychic hair-trigger and as testy as a pubescent boy arguing with his garage band. (He’d already decided he was the sexy-but-aloof bassist and Steve was the all-American lead singer.)
"That’s what private airstrips and helipads are for. But I think you’re right; that place farther west had a nicer stretch of flat land. Did I show you the sketches for my new 400-seater super-luxury jet? I’m thinking white deerskin interior, bamboo accents, stewardesses in extremely short skirts."
Steve gave him that look, that damned superior ‘I can’t believe this is how you choose to live your life, couldn’t you be putting all your money and genius to more altruistic causes?’ look, and even though it was all fake, and everyone in the known world was busy enjoying the fact that Tony Stark was until (very) recently insolvent it got Tony’s back up every time. Once, he’d even e-mailed Steve a list of his corporation’s charitable donations for the year—only to realize Steve Rogers was to e-mail as chimpanzees were to quantum mechanics. Actually, no; Tony had met some brilliant chimps at MIT, and he was sure at least half of all primates could do better with his own corporate version of Outlook Express than Captain America could. Either way, the past few weeks he’d been reduced to pussyfooting it around Steve’s good graces. The man had been big enough to forgive him, and no matter how much that meant Tony owed him, he hadn’t rubbed it in his face. He deserved a little respect—Stark style, of course—even if he couldn’t appreciate Tony’s version of a good time.
"We can make the skirts longer, if that’s the problem. How do you feel about exposed ankles and wrists? Too taboo?"
That was when the first whining noise emerged from the helicopter’s engine, cutting off his trail of thought and Steve’s disgruntled expression, and it sounded like trouble to all of them—the pilot shot Cap a worried glance, and Cap in turn looked at Tony. Big blue eyes, narrowed, unhappy. "Just the wind shear," the pilot had assured them, but it didn’t sound convincing to Tony. Besides, the man could tell himself it was wind shear all he wanted: he was the only one wearing a parachute, since their gear added so much weight.
Then the whine had stopped, and they all simultaneously exhaled; Cap had even relaxed his broad shoulders from their tense scrunch and resumed looking out the window.
"Next time, Gary, we’ll take one of my choppers inst—"
The horrifying sound was, in Tony’s professional opinion, that of the swash plate exploding free of its moorings—and clipping the stabilizer bar. Cheap Soviet-era iron, Tony had time to think, and then the helicopter canted alarmingly. The next thing Tony knew, Steve was throwing himself at him, and for a split second Tony was positive that all that forgiveness business had been completely political and Cap was going to fling him out of an open door into the frozen wilds of Russia. Well, it certainly had a provenance.
The hard shoulder impacted with his face, making him see stars, and Tony tasted copper an instant after he smelled Steve’s aftershave. Then they were in free-fall, and they were going to die, but the ground had been exponentially closer than Tony had calculated. There was a sickening crunch on impact—branches? His skull? Ribs?—and then the world went black.
Tony.
Tonytony. Tony. Tony.
Something was moving him; actually, someone was slapping him with increasing velocity.
"Tony!"
He groaned, squeezing his already-closed eyes tighter.
"I can hear you. You don’t have to hit me again," he managed, and heard something in reply that was probably words, but didn’t make any sense. Everything looked like it was underwater when he opened his eyes: blurred and wet and blue, and he was having a hard time finding Steve’s face. Hey. We’re alive. How the fuck are we alive?
"You need to sit up. Right now."
Oh, good ol’ Cap, always ordering him around. Tony’s head spun as he tried to get his bearings. One beefy arm supported him as he sat mostly upright, and then again as he twisted quickly to the side and brought up bile. Tony had learned long ago not to eat before flights. But Cap was shaking him again, and he realized he’d started to doze off sitting up.
"Sorry, I’m here, we should call 911."
"Tony, we’re in Russia, for Pete’s sake." The blonde’s voice sounded far away. "No. Tony, I need you to stay awake. Hey." Another slap, lighter this time. "Stay awake. You need to help me. My shoulder’s dislocated, and I can’t get us out of here if you can’t help me get it back in."
"We can just call—"
This time the slap felt personal, and a little desperate.
"Ow, Jesus, when did you become so violent? Fine, here."
"The other arm, Tony." Steve sounded worried and distant, and Tony realized his pants were wet—everything was wet. He could hear crackling, like a fire, and the smell of burning fuel started to make its way into his brain.
"Should we be worried about the fire—"
"My shoulder, Tony. Focus. Please-- Dammit, sorry, no, it’s good you didn’t warn me," and it was almost gratifying, because Steve never cursed, but Tony felt around the joint one-handed and decided everything was fine. Then again, right now, he wasn’t sure he could tell a shoulder from a dolphin. "Now let’s see if we can get you standing up—Tony?"
"Tony."
His world was moving.
Tony cracked his eyes open. Everything was grey and windy and cold. It was raining, which was just miserable, and he realized the world was moving because he was slung in some sort of tarp over Steve’s back.
"Hey."
"You alright back there?" Steve asked, out of breath but trudging purposefully along. "You had me worried. Do you think you hit your head?"
"I think I hit everything," Tony replied, "there was a lot of ground," and realized that he was wrapped in a parachute. "The pilot..?"
Steve shook his head, and Tony fell silent. His hands were trembling slightly, and he looked down at them, turning them over. Small geometric lines were creeping up over his wrists like broken capillaries in the Matrix. He tugged his half-torn shirt cuffs lower, and tried to get his eyes to focus on the landscape over Steve’s shoulder.
"What about the suit?" he asked, but he didn’t hear Steve reply.
When he came to, it was darker, but the sun hadn’t quite set—not that it was visible through the heavy cloud cover. He was propped against the side of a massive pine tree and Steve was digging around in a bag he didn’t recognize. They were half-way up a hill, and he could see the smoke from the wreckage through the trees; it meant he hadn’t passed out for very long, which he took to be a good sign. The rain had turned to small, wet flakes of snow that was steadily growing denser, and Tony hugged his parachute a little more tightly around himself.
"What are you looking for?" he asked, and looked mortified when his voice came out as a croak.
"Emergency flares, a phone, anything. This was the only thing I could pull out before the helicopter exploded."
"…the chopper exploded?"
"You missed that part, huh?" Steve sounded worried, but Tony couldn’t help noticing the large gash above his left eye and the way he was favoring one knee.
"Are you alright?" He tried to sit himself up a little straighter, but his insides gave an unpleasant lurch and he stopped himself from doing any more than drawing his knees closer to his chest. Gucci suits did not stand up well to Russian winters: memo for later. One side of his neck itched, and he rubbed at it absently.
"Just scratches, that’s all." Tony must have made a noise, because Steve shot him a frustrated look. "Scratches, dislocated shoulder, twisted my knee. I might have cracked a rib or two," he added.
"Because you used yourself as my seatbelt," Tony pointed out, caught between guilt and mortification. "Jesus, Steve. What were you thinking?"
"Oh, I don’t know, maybe I was thinking ‘I don’t want Tony to die’?" Steve was giving him a funny look, and Tony burrowed deeper into his parachute. When did Cap start caring? No, that wasn’t fair: Cap cared, alright. Cared to a painful degree about everyone. The only person whose back he didn’t have was his own All-American macho one, and when he wasn’t a bullheaded SOB he was the most selfless, giving person Tony had ever met. But Cap had also been told, more than once, just how important he was: as a man, as a leader, as a goddamn national icon. No matter what, Cap couldn’t die.
Again.
Tony winced.
"Thank you," he said, finally, because anything else sounded far too biting. And then he added, "We need to get back to that wreckage. If I can get to the briefcase suit, I can get us out of here."
"Small problem with that."
"Like?"
"Like how about the fire burned hot enough to melt the entire fuselage down around everything that was inside it."
"What?"
"I don’t know what these people are using for fuel, but we’re talking a half-charred, half-melted pile of metal that you can’t pry anything out of. I thought about it, but…" Steve was looking at him again, and it was starting to make Tony uncomfortable. "I figured if you were too out of it, and I got hurt, then we’d be in a really bad situation."
Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled.
Tony tried to make his expression as neutral as possible, but his jaw twitched.
"Steve, I have this distinct impression we’re already in a really bad situation."
The blonde grimaced and shrugged, and stopped digging in the pack with a frustrated sigh.
"There’s nothing. A tarp, a box of matches, a can of inverted marking paint, a pack of jerky, and an empty canteen."
"That’s not really nothing. That’s actually pretty good." Maybe he’d watched too many episodes of MacGyver or maybe he was simply remembering the satisfaction of being Tony Stark, but ideas were slowly rolling around in his head. Even potentially concussed geniuses still had ideas. "There must be plenty of caves around here, right? We can take shelter in one of them before the weather gets any worse. Judging by how hard it’s starting to blow, it’s going to get a lot worse. We can mark our path away from the wreckage with the spray paint—if it shows up against the bark, but it should—because every suit I make has a tracking beacon that’s meant to go off if it’s not password overridden every four hours. I have that fail-safe built in in case I ever end up, you know, at the bottom of a lake or something." It’d happened. Twice. Nobody could accuse Tony Stark of not learning his lesson (eventually). "Anyway, the beacon is embedded within the suit lining, and it’d take a lot more than a fuel fire to damage it. It should kick in within a couple hours, and then our location with be relayed to Jarvis at the Avengers’ Mansion."
Tony looked pretty proud of himself; Steve looked dubious.
"We can eat the jerky and fill up the canteen with snow to make sure we have fresh water. Then we set up the tarp as a wind-break—and mark it with more spray paint—at the mouth of our cave, and use the matches to create a nice little toasty fire. It won’t be so bad." Alright, Steve knew all this and he’d definitely watched too much MacGyver; the whole plan was starting to sound like a rugged sleep-out party, and maybe he’d hit his head harder than he thought, because Tony was suddenly imagining Steve in footie pajamas. But the footie pajamas were the best part. Did they come in size Extra Butch?
"Tony?"
"What?"
"Tony!"
Shit.
The gentle crackle of a fire woke him up, and Tony coughed as the smoke got in his nose. The place wasn’t particularly well-ventilated.
"Are you awake?" Steve asked. He sounded tired and distant, and Tony realized dully that Steve was trying to gently shake him awake. Tony winced but nodded. His head was still swimming, but his eyes were focusing now. He could make out the low ceiling of the cave, its dry walls and rocky, leaf-strewn floor. There was a tall, relatively wide trail leading out to a slit of fading daylight where the mouth of the cave must have been. "I have good news and bad news."
"Good news first."
"The good news is, I liked your plan. I didn’t have a better one, anyway. I had a bit of trouble finding a cave deep enough to give us any cover, and then I had to make sure you were settled safely, and then I had to go all the way back down to the helicopter to mark our path from there. But we’re dry and I have some firewood and the jerky is pretty fresh."
Hey, things were sounding alright.
"The bad news?"
"The bad news is that the cave doesn’t go any deeper than this, and the blizzard really picked up, like you said. It sounded like a tree came down and... A tree came down. We’re sort of stuck here."
"Steve, tell me you didn’t just say we’re trapped in a cave in the middle of nowhere in Russia."
The blonde rubbed the back of his neck.
"Yeah, that um. That about sums it up."
"Shit."
"Yeah. But let’s hope your tracker thing will get everyone to show up."
Tony was already trying to scramble to his feet, disentangling himself from the parachute and feeling his wobbly way along the wall of the cave towards the exit. Sure enough, behind the half-torn tarp, there was an extremely impressive half-rotted tree trunk as broad as a small delivery truck. There was enough space to stick out an arm and for the wind to be blowing in a growing pile of snow, but even with Steve’s augmented strength, there was no way he’d be able to budge it. From the scuff marks in the dust and leaves, Tony could see he’d given it a go already.
"Tony? You said they’d find us, right?"
"Right. Unless the beacon doesn’t work for whatever reason. Or unless the Soviets are blocking certain satellite signals. Or they could come out here and not be able to find us because there’s about two feet of snow on the ground already and now there’s a tree over the entrance of the cave and—"
Steve’s hand came up, sudden and surprisingly rough, to rest on the side of his neck. The blonde turned his jaw up, and Tony tried to jerk free.
"What the Hell..?"
"What’s on your neck, Tony?" Cap’s thumb was rough, and Tony flinched from the brush of it over his jugular; he wrenched away and covered the spot with his own hand, rubbing at it. It felt overly sensitive, like he’d bruised it during the fall.
"What are you talking about?"
"Tony, come here." Cap’s blue eyes were soft, pale enough to stand out even in the darkness of the cave. One eyebrow was matted with blood and there was a bruised lump above it. Tony shied away when the blonde approached him, until his shoulders hit the wall behind him and had nowhere else to go. "You have these little lines. It’s… they almost look like an Etch A Sketch."
Oh. That.
The shorter man let out a nervous laugh, still covering his neck with his hand. If the new reactor core was poisoning him, then having it creep so far away from his chest was definitely not a good sign. The laugh only made Cap’s brow furrow, like he was wondering if Tony needed to be shaken, or whether he might pass out again. Tony didn’t like the slightly high, hysterical edge that threatened to creep into his voice, so he cleared his throat.
"I didn’t tell you, because I didn’t think it was relevant, but I needed to come up with a new reactor core to power the new briefcase suit we came here to test-drive. I didn’t precisely run all the tests on it."
"Tony."
"Yeah, I know. Look, there’s nothing we can do about it until we get back to the US, anyway. It’s not like I carry a spare reactor around in my back pocket, you know?"
"Let me see it."
Tony couldn’t read Steve’s eyes, but his own hands were shaking slightly again. Maybe the palladium hadn’t been such a hot idea. Steve was just watching him, patient and getting that bullish set to his mouth, so Tony swallowed down the retorts and loosened his half-charred tie. Since it was ruined, and he wasn’t about to be invited to give a talk on the importance of backup plans, he tossed it aside and undid the first four buttons on his shirt. The reactor glowed a dull blue, hidden under a tank top, but Steve’s eyes widened enough that Tony wished he had a mirror to see what Cap was seeing.
"My God, Tony."
Very reassuring.
Cap was very much in his personal space, the broad heat of him blocking Tony’s thought process. His fingers tentatively skirted the bare skin above the neckline of the tank top, and they felt cold and rough against his skin. He tried not to flinch, but Steve wasn’t making it easy. This was just awkward.
"Steve, what—"
"You’re burning up."
The big hand was on his forehead now, and that felt cold, too.
"Tony, your pupils are huge." There was an uneasy edge to Steve’s voice, and that definitely wasn’t helping things. He shifted his hand to cup Tony’s cheek, the back of his neck, and his expression just got more upset the farther he got. "You’re running a serious fever. We need to get you medical treatment."
Because they could just wave their hands out over the fallen tree and one of the wolves from earlier would helpfully go fetch an ambulance.
"That’s not really going to happen, is it?" Tony managed, finally pushing past him to go back towards the fire. He didn’t even stumble, but he felt sweat beading his forehead by the time he got back to his parachute. The fire wasn’t making it any easier to cool off; Tony shook off his suit jacket and the button-down shirt, and found a spot against the wall farther from the heat of the flames.
Steve approached him a moment later, crouching down to offer him the canteen.
"You should drink. If you have a fever, you have to stay hydrated."
Tony took the canteen and took a few swallows of the cold water.
"I should probably warn you that it’s likely to get worse. Judging by how fast these marks are spreading, exponentially worse."
Steve frowned.
"What does that mean, Tony?"
"It means in multiples—"
"I know the word, stop evading."
So much for trying to lighten the mood. Tony turned his hand over to show Steve his wrist. The other man picked it up, frowning at the lines on Tony’s skin.
"I noticed these around my chest port this morning when we were leaving to meet the helicopter. I thought it was just a localized reaction to the new fuel core I used, but…" He lifted the wrist out of Steve’s grasp, and gestured with his other hand at the mark on his neck. "I think I can safely guess at this point that it’s poisoning me, and it’s doing so faster and faster. That means I’m burning through the fuel core too quickly." Steve already looked concerned, but Tony had to lay it all out for him. "Judging by the lack of daylight out there, if the transmitter in my suit is working the Avengers would have been notified, and they should be here and searching for us relatively soon. We have to hope they can find us, because if the poisoning doesn’t kill me, then the reactor running out of juice will."
"My God."
Tony winced.
"Yeah, that pretty much sums it up."
"There has to be something we can do to slow down the process."
"Theoretically, there is."
"Theoretical is all we have out here, Tony." That was certainly true.
"The best thing we can do is put my body on ice. If I can get hypothermic without, you know, dying from it, it should slow the progression. You said yourself that it feels like I’m running a fever. It’s like my body is going septic, but from a toxin instead of a pathogen. I don’t know if it’s spreading through my bloodstream or through my lymphatic system, but it doesn’t really matter, since both would be slowed considerably by dropping my core temperature." It could also change the type of chemical reaction that was going on in his body, short-circuit the wiring Extremis had added, or do unforeseen things to the new reactor itself. Tony figured dead would be dead: there was no point alarming Cap with all the manners in which this was a bad idea, since this was the only realistic option.
"And this is going to give you the best chance of surviving?" Steve asked, genuine worry evident on his face. Tony knew Steve hadn’t had the best track record with ice himself, but then again, he was living proof it could work out ok.
"Best I can come up with. I can’t tell if I’m concussed or if it’s affecting my brain—or both. The important part, Steve, is keeping me conscious. That thing I said about not hitting me? You pretty much have free rein to smack me around as much as you want."
"Tony." The blonde sounded hurt. "You weren’t responding and I was trying to get you out of the wreckage and—"
"Cap, I know. Ok? I get it." He patted the man’s shoulder; it would have been natural, before they’d spent what felt like a lifetime trying to tear each other apart, but now it felt awkward. Would it ever feel normal again? Would they live long enough to fix the rift between them? Steve would, at least. "I also know I deserve a lot more than that, and with a lot more vehemence behind it."
Steve started to open his mouth, but Tony held up his hand.
"I don’t know if I’m going to be alive in a couple hours, much less lucid. I want to say this, and I want to say it once. I’m sorry. About all of it. It never should have gone as far as it did. You have no idea how much your death wrecked me. I would have gone in your place in a heartbeat. And I know you’ll never be able to forgive me. I can’t even believe you helped to bring me back." God, was he choking up? Tony swallowed it down hard, chalked it up to fear for his own life. "I just want you to know how grateful I am that you’re even willing to talk to me. I mean that. And that you risked your life in that helicopter to keep me in one piece. And if I make it out of this alive, you need to tell me what I can do to try to pay you back."
"Can I talk now?"
"Now you can talk." He was allowed to grin.
"There’s a lot between us that we both regret. If we had the choice, I think we both would have done things differently. That’s why I couldn’t give up on you. I knew that you regretted it, and where there’s regret, there’s room to mend bridges. We both just have to keep working on it. Ok?"
Shit, he really was going to lose it, but the relief was downright physical. Tony’s shoulders sagged, and when Cap offered out his hand, he used it to pull him into a one-armed hug. And he managed to offer up a genuine smile for what felt like the first time in forever. It was a pity he was going to end up dead, because this felt like it could be an actual clean start.
At least until the next time he ran his mouth and Cap started hating him again. Somehow it was always too tempting to screw things up.
"Ok. For now, let’s turn me into an icicle."
"Hey Cap?"
"Yes, Tony?"
"If I ever tease you about being stuck in the ice again, I give you permission to take one of my cars."
Snow was gusting in over the top of the fallen tree at the entrance, enough of it to provide a convenient place to bury Tony up to the neck in the snow. His hands and feet were left free, and padded with layers of cut-up parachute to prevent frostbite. Tony had already fallen asleep once, with Steve sitting across from him with a small fire going against the wall where the wind wasn’t as bad. When he woke up, Steve was sitting cross-legged behind him with Tony’s head cradled in his lap, gently shaking his shoulders. Tony hadn’t questioned it.
"Which car?"
The cold was making it extremely hard to think: Tony’s jaw was chattering in a way he found morbidly hilarious but Steve appeared to find worrying, and his vision kept swimming in and out of focus.
"Whichever one you like." He didn’t remember that they’d been sold off.
"How about for every time you tease me, you make me an omelet."
Tony scrunched up his nose, but he was so cold that it came out looking a lot more like a grimace.
"S-since when do you like omelets?"
"Since the first time you made them for all of us. Pepper mentioned you were good in the kitchen, but I thought she meant it sarcastically. I thought she meant good for…" Steve looked a little guilty.
"Good for a guy who never has to wash his own dishes, fold his own laundry, wipe his own ass?"
That got a laugh out of Steve, and the blonde’s cheeks flushed the same color as the tips of his ears. Bashful Cap was actually kinda cute, in a very ‘I’m noticing these things because my body is trying to shut down and die’ sort of way.
"Yes, something like that."
"I do actually do my own dishes," he said, squeezing his eyes shut as a chill rolled down his spine. "Sometimes. But it’s a deal. If I tease you, I make you an omelet."
Steve was saying something. Tony tried to squint his eyes open to read his lips, but it was so dark in the cave. Had it been so dark ten minutes ago?
"Tony. Tony, hey, come on, stay with me."
Steve’s voice. Genuinely panicked, and then lips against his, overheated and painfully soft, and a hard puff of warm air into his lungs. Then another. Tony came to with a gasp, his ears ringing, his entire body feeling like it was on fire.
"Thank God." Someone was putting an oxygen mask over his face, the forced air cold and dry, but all he could see was Cap’s face hovering a few inches from his. The gash on his forehead had been taped but had blossomed into a handsome black eye. Steve was talking at him, words he couldn’t make out. Tony turned his head to see what the source of the noise was, and saw someone in a flight suit.
"Another helicopter?" he managed. "You have got to be kidding."
"What’s he trying to say?" one of the strangers asked, and Steve shook his head at them.
Tony reached up—his hand was covered in tape, there looked to be at least three IVs in it—and tugged the mask free before they could stop him.
"This better be a StarkTech chopper," he said.
"Oh, Tony," Steve replied, and one of the flight medics bullied him back into the mask even as the blonde took his hand in his big, careful paws. His hands were warm, and whatever they were pumping into his veins was cold and tingly in all the best of ways.
"Not every day you get kissed by a national icon," he said, trying to raise his voice over the sound of the engine. Steve turned gratifyingly pink, and glanced at the medics as if checking to see if they’d heard.
"I wasn’t kissing you, Tony. You stopped breathing. I was helping to administer CPR."
"You were kissing me. Admit it."
"I think you’re going to be just fine," Steve replied, trying to sound grumpy despite the blush. "I think whatever they’re giving you is making you loopy."
"Your lips are really soft."
"Tony, seriously. It was CPR."
"I think I’m feeling short of breath again." Tony did his best attempt at a dramatic cough; for a moment Steve looked concerned, and then he looked angry. Which was really sort of comical with the black eye.
"Don’t do that. I was worried about you. They’re giving you medication; Jarvis sent over the results from your blood tests, so they’re trying to neutralize— Tony, what are you doing?"
Tony felt pleasantly warm, and he knew he was grinning like an idiot, but he had a hand against Steve’s cheek and his thumb touching his plush lower lip.
"Soft."
"Wow, Tony, really?" The blush was back in force, and Steve sounded exasperated. "What did you guys give him?" Steve asked the medics, who were assuring him that this was normal. Of course it was normal; Tony felt great. Better than he’d felt in days. At least Steve wasn’t shoving his hand away. That felt important for some reason.
"You guys should tell him he needs to kiss me again," Tony said, tugging at one of the medics’ sleeves. But then the other one injected something into his IV, and the lights switched off.
Epilogue
"The package you requested has arrived, sir," Jarvis informed Tony. He wiped his hands off on a rag, but with how greasy the thing had gotten he wasn’t sure if that was better or worse. It had started off this morning as his white tank top, but now it was a black rag. He tossed it in the trash and wiped his hands off on his black pants (that had started off as jeans) and then on his belly when that didn’t do the trick (neither did his belly).
"About time. I’m assuming it’s kinda large?"
"Very large, sir."
"Right, have it put in the back cargo bay. I’m going to grab a shower before I start tinkering with it. I think this grease is flammable, and you know how I am with flamethrowers."
"I know painfully well, sir. There is one more thing."
"Well, spill it." Sometimes having a computer with a personality proved less than efficient; sometimes Jarvis just wanted to talk, especially about his feelings, and it was worse than having an actual relative nagging at him.
"It appears that Captain Rogers is at the front door."
"Did he say why?" Tony asked, screwing his nose up.
"No, but he let himself in," said Steve, leaning against the doorway and holding up a set of keys between his thumb and forefinger. "You gave me a set, remember?"
Tony’s eyes narrowed as he tried to think it through.
"Was I sober at the time?"
"Definitely not." Steve came down the steps into the work room. He was dressed as casually as Steve Rogers ever dressed, which meant sharply shined brown shoes, carefully ironed khakis, and a soft-looking blue v-neck sweater over a button-down shirt. He held up a bag. "I wanted to see how you were doing. I brought donuts."
Tony grinned and snatched the bag.
"Best news I’ve had all day. You have creepy timing; that chopper with my suit melted into it like some kinda modern sculpture? It’s being delivered as we speak."
"That’s not creepy timing, Tony. One of your suits is in there. I had to escort it." Steve sighed and Tony followed him as he let himself into the kitchen to poke at the coffeemaker. "There’s the whole matter of national security thing that goes on whenever Iron Man is involved in an international incident."
"I would hardly call crashing in the woods an incident. Hey, no sprinkles?" he asked, hopping up to sit on the kitchen island and digging around for a donut. He settled for glazed.
"Sorry, they were all out. By the way, you told me on the phone that these were healing." There was suddenly a hand on his neck, and Tony flinched, not having seen it coming. Steve looked apologetic, started to drop his hand away. "Sorry." Tony didn’t know what possessed him to catch it.
"It’s alright. They’re fading a little. The new reactor’s out of my body, I have Ol’ Faithful back in here," he added, patting the blue glow on his chest, "and it’s just going to take a little time for the palladium to work its way out. Meanwhile, I get to look like a cool piece of art."
Steve chuckled lightly, poked a forefinger against his jawline.
"Your beard’s already a cool piece of art, you don’t need the extra help."
"So now you like my beard?" Tony asked, raising his eyebrows. "Careful, Steve, I’m going to get the wrong impression." He stuffed a donut into his mouth, chewing blissfully.
"I really don’t think it’s the wrong impression," Steve said, grudgingly, and Tony almost choked on his donut. Then there was a glass of water in his hand and he was washing it down.
"Say what?"
"I said I was thinking about how worried I was about losing you." Cap looked like he was going to start scuffing his shoes against the floor in a minute. "You’re my friend, Tony, but I. I think it’s more than that."
"You think it’s more than that. You really weren’t giving me CPR, were you?"
Steve looked exasperated.
"Of course I was giving you CPR, Tony, do you really think I was thinking about—"
But it was impossible to talk with Tony’s mouth on his. Tony got both of his hands right into Steve’s hair, adjusted the angle because Steve was still going from shock to relaxing into the contact and their teeth clicked together until he found the right flight path. He’d been right: Steve’s lips were soft, at least when they relaxed under his, and then the blonde let out an almost desperate little groan and Tony felt himself hauled flush against his body—in a hug.
"God, Tony, I was so worried and—"
"Steve. Can we be worried later?" Tony asked, breathless, a little agitated. Definitely turned on. "I was sort of doing something here."
"Sorry, I’m not very good at this sort of—"
Yes, the best course of action was to shut him up. Tony kissed his upper lip, then the lower one, and felt Steve’s big shoulders droop down in compliance. He brushed his thumbs over the taller man’s temples, brushed one over the cut on Steve’s forehead that had healed up so fast. His hair was soft and lightly gelled into place, which made it all the more pleasant to shamelessly muss when he got his fists carefully into it. Then Steve was kissing him, awkward and earnest, and Tony got the distinct impression he really hadn’t had that much practice. One big hand came down, awkward and uncertain, against his ribs until Tony slid closer to the edge of the counter and brought their bodies into contact.
Then he had one arm around his waist and the other around his upper back, and then a hand raking through his hair, and then he had his mouth on Steve’s neck and his hands jerking at his sweater and shirt, and Steve breathing out Tony when his blunt nails scraped up his flanks and left faint engine grease tracks in their path. Steve’s mouth found the side of his neck, like he was trying to trace the angular lines back down to his reactor, and then Tony was fumbling with Steve’s belt and Jesus, that was not for beginners, so much for that idea, they would have to work up to that, but there was nothing wrong with getting a hand around him and hearing Steve cry out, except that suddenly there was a mess on his stomach and Steve had his forehead against his shoulder and, "Sorry, sorry Tony, you tasted like sugar and grease and-- sorry I—"
"Actually, I’m just going to take that as a compliment," Tony said, breathless and laughing and stupidly happy. He grabbed a dish towel and wiped himself down while Steve fumbled with his trousers, then slid off the kitchen island and caught the broad wrist to stop him. "Better idea. You return the favor in the shower, kill two birds with one stone. What do you think?"
"I think you’re a genius."
"That’s what the paperwork says," Tony agreed, leading the way down the hallway. "Jarvis, go ahead and cancel the rest of my day. Looks like I suddenly have plans."
Fin.
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Absolutely lovely. This story really made my day.
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Gosh, just hit all my kinks at once!!! Hurt/comfort; Tony being too damn stubborn to admit that he's, you know, DYING; Steve jumping on the metaphorical grenade to try and keep Tony safe; almost!deathbed revelations of FEELINGS; sugar and grease... :DDDD All the bestest things!!!
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