OVERCLOCKS ; independent & heavily selective tony stark / the invincible iron man, solely based in earth-616 / comics.  there is not and never will be mcu content on this blog.  mutuals only.  21+.  heavy subject matter present including but not limited to:  alcoholism, depression, suicidal ideation, body modification, body horror, child abuse, domestic abuse, death.  plotting and long character arcs preferred.  mostly canon-compliant:  does not include secret empire (2016), tony stark: iron man (2018), iron man 2020 (2020), or iron man vol. 6 (2021).  main blog canon can be found here.

heavily affiliated and exclusive with:  @avengerled​ (steve rogers / bucky barnes / logan) / @shespy (natalia romanova) / @hadariyao (ororo munroe) / @belovay (yelena belova).  i do not interact with other versions of these characters.

i do not interact with hydra muses or muses with hydra verses.

Steve sat, bent over his laptop, trying to plan this party in the bedroom. Halley was playing in her room, so Steve was in earshot, but he wanted it all to be a surprise. Granted, it wasn’t like she was old enough to really understand what all was being picked out, or really remember it. Or… care, probably. Regardless, as Tony started rattling things off, Steve nodded and clicked, taking the pencil out from behind his ear and scratching stuff off his nearby notebook. “Dinosaur decor it is. Cake’s ordered now, with orange flowers.”

With that order submitted, he closed the tab and looked up and over at Tony. The laundry registered, but ranked lower than current party planning priorities, so he kept on topic and asked, “A professional photographer is too much, right?” It’d be nice to get good photos. And if they hired someone, they could both actually be in the pictures, instead of one or the other. It seemed like a good idea. But then they’d have to do the whole vetting process to make sure the photographer was legit and not some villain or creep.

Steve looked down at his notes, crossing out bouncy-house with a flick of his pencil. “Yeah, but I want it to be a good party. I mean, the pictures are going to last forever. It has to at least be nice so her scrapbook is good.” He hadn’t really thought of adult games. Should there be adult games? It was Halley’s party, it should really be about her, not making sure the adults were entertained. He wrote down paper and crayons (big), then put his head in his hands.

“I’m overthinking this, aren’t I?” At least he was getting better at recognizing when he was getting too… anxious, about this. Parenting stuff. Not controlling but just… Halley was their kid and he just desperately didn’t want her to long for anything. And, admittedly, there was a little bit of guilt there as well. Of the two of them, Steve still had more commitments–at least as Captain America. He fielded so many calls, despite doing his best to step back from things, and sometimes–like now–felt like he was missing out. Like he should know that Paw Patrol was last week’s news.

Steve flopped back against the pillows, heaving a sigh. Looking over at Tony, he moved his hand over the comforter, hand palm side up as he wiggled his fingers and looked at Tony pleadingly.

When the choice was between continuing to poke sadly at the laundry in the attempt to look like he was actually accomplishing something and Steve, that was a no-brainer, and he gleefully tossed the tshirt he’d been picking up and putting back down over his shoulder with a kind of hedonistic joy and moved to climb onto the bed.  He’d have to find it later, sure, but for now it could absolutely bite his ass, as he settled himself against Steve’s side with a sigh before answering.

“Peter.  He doesn’t need to be vetted and he likes free food.  He actually has some talent, too, so the holy scrapbook will remain unblemished by someone taking shaky pictures on a five year old cellphone in portrait mode.”  Even if those pictures were going to amount to a two year old who decided hands made perfectly fine utensils for eating cake and managed to get orange icing everywhere - Tony was a futurist, but even he didn’t need a clear view of the future to see where that was going to go.  But, by God, he’d make sure Steve had clear pictures of the orange icing smeared everywhere for the scrapbook (and admittedly, for Halley, too, later on, probably to use as adorable blackmail).

He raised one hand, gestured in the air.  “You are overthinking it.”  Which was hilariously hypocritical of him to say, when it came down to it.  “And it’s not like I haven’t already done this, I talked myself into circles last week over catering or no, until I realized we’re talking about a two year old who eats plain cheerios out of the box when she thinks no one’s looking.  And, you know, the main thing being she has fun and that no one’s going to remember food at a toddler’s birthday party.”

NOW AT OVERCLOCKS

“It’s a good idea!” Steve slid along the opposite side of the counter. The hotline was not his worst idea (that was probably the van). But you do it once and everyone points to it like it was some sort of joke. It’d worked! And it was before the internet, what else was he supposed to do, just leave people stranded?

Halley looked at him, and Steve puffed his cheeks up, crossed his eyes, and wiggled his ears. She burst out laughing, clapping her hands together before reaching for his face and slapping the air out of his cheeks. Which kind of hurt, but hey, he still had all his teeth. He looked back up at Tony.

“Look, me, Sam, and Bucky will take turns answering stuff, so it’s not all on me all the time. It gets us all in touch with the people in a way I think I need again, after… you know.” He waved his hand. Steve didn’t like talking about that other him or his takeover of SHIELD. He didn’t like thinking about it either, even though it seemed to pop up at the worst possible times. And he knew he didn’t have to spell it out for Tony, since he was one of the few people to have never left Steve’s corner.

He wouldn’t lie though–a big part of him was wondering if this was a good idea. Not the hotline in and of itself–that was solid, he knew. It was involving himself with it. Taking the time to travel around America had been good for him, but he’d learned that there were still people out there who felt betrayed. Who didn’t want to trust him. And he didn’t want to muddy the waters–if getting the hotline up and running without him would actually get other people to use it, then he’d step back in a heartbeat. Even if it’d bruise a bit to do so.

“Besides, with SHIELD gone and the Avengers still out of the country, people need to know there’s still heroes in the states who want to look out after them.”

He said, with a straight face, like all of New York wasn’t filled to the brim with superheroes already.

So...Here was the thing.  Tony could admit that the hotline, as a concept, had some merit.  He could.  Maybe not to Steve’s face directly, because that would be the inch that got taken for a mile, but generally, the idea of a place for people to anonymously (or unanonymously) report things that needed the attention of someone who could offer more than the typical local authorities was a great idea.  Especially if that place was not the Avengers website, which got flooded with crank reports and also did no one any good - teleporters or no - with the Avengers currently housed at the North Pole.

Sam’s updates had made it even better.  See?  He could be charitable about it.  But Tony knew Steve.  Knew him too well in some respects, because he knew how Steve could be once he got a bug in his brain about something.  He knew, because he was the same way.  They both tended to gnaw and worry at the bone they locked their jaws around until it was whittled into submission, and while the hotline had had its merits, it was one of Steve’s bugs.

“So...Does Bucky know he’s volunteered for this?”  And, okay, again, that had a kind of poetic beauty about it, the three Caps all working together on the Captain America hotline to save the little guy, one call, email, text, or tweet a time.  But Steve was a bad offender of the cart before the horse infraction.  Imagining him volunteering Bucky before Bucky even knew it was a thing was not out of the realm of very real possibility. 

Bucky looked at the two games he’d held up, then back up at Tony. “Sorry, Rock Band is not an option. It’s Mario Kart or Super Smash Bros. And this is only to see who gets to decide what we order out for dinner tonight, so speed runs only, no items, the usual. I guess we could mute the TV and put on some music if you really wanted.”

“You know, if you’d just agree my idea is the superior one, we wouldn’t have to do this at all.”  He was right.  Bucky knew he was right.  He was just being ridiculously stubborn about it.  Besides, they both knew they were both lying if they were saying they were going to agree to a speed run of Mario Kart with no items.  Because Tony knew, in his heart, that were a run to take place, blue shells would become involved.  It was right.  It was the way.

Of course, there was the third option - the elephant in the room, as it were - that they could both simply order from where they wanted, since there was an eighty percent chance one of them would actually have to go out to pick it up, anyway.  And a greater than eighty percent chance it would be Tony, simply because he was faster.  Sure.  They could do that.  But that sounded like hippie Fantastic Four talk.

@avengerled​ (steve) sent:  ❝ good to know the world didn’t get boring while i was gone. ❞

“There we go, there’s that unfortunate yet endearing sense of optimism I know and love so well.”  Only Steve would find the bright side in a nuclear apocalypse.  Sure, they’ve both been up and moving in this brave new world for a hot minute now, and things keep snowballing in unpleasant and unexpected ways, but Steve’s got plenty of things to punch, so that’s nice.  “It’s when you get all broody I know things are really bad.”

He gives the copy of the Publick he’s been read a shake, folding it in half horizontally to get at the articles at the bottom of the pages he’s been reading.  He’s glad the free press is still operating in some form, that there’s some way for people to get news relatively quickly in an age of generators and hand pumps for water, but while he has no issue at all with Piper Wright on a person-to-person level, journalistic integrity this thing is not.  There’s enough editorial interjection in it that JJ Jameson would have raised objections about the quality of the stories coming out of Diamond City.

Surprisingly useful, despite that, though.

she’s hunched over the coms, fingers drumming against the desk. Janet startles when she hears the metallic twang of Iron Man’s voice. She looks up and smiles, giving a small wave. But the expression is quick to slip off her features. “No. Not a peep. Nothing. I’m starting to worry.”

Janet has been by the radio for hours now. No one has responded from the Baxter Building. The pixie is beginning to wonder if the Fantastic Four have been sucked into another dimension.

“What should we do? It hasn’t been 24 hours yet but I’m worried, Iron Man.”

@overclocks​ sent in: “Still no word from the Fantastic Four?”

On the one hand, it doesn’t bode spectacularly well, if the FF aren’t responding to any hails in their direction.  It’s not just the radio they’re failing to reply back on, Tony’s tried to call Reed Richards directly from both his office and here in the mansion, but no joy.  Which brings him to the other hand, which is that Reed is as bad as Tony when he has something on to boil:  He’ll narrow in specifically on that thing in particular and the rest of the world might as well not exist.

But for no one to answer?  That’s worrisome.