#pollyrepeat

Spending time with Tony always made Clint remember why he never spent time with Tony.

He was pretty sure his eyes telegraphed exactly how batshit he was starting to feel all the time, so he was making an effort to avoid eye contact and prolonged exposure to other human beings.

“Finally: the future,” Tony says into the dark, quiet room. After a half-second he realizes the HUD is down and he’s no longer holding an ominous metal disc in his hand, and a half-second after that he realizes there’s a much healthier breeze happening down by the crown jewels than is normally possible in the suit, and also his toes have sunk into something soft and slightly squishy. “The future doesn’t like clothes,” Tony says. “The future watches Terminator. The future is kind of chilly.”

If he were human, or if this were an action movie, this is the moment where JARVIS might say, “I have an idea,” except JARVIS is an AI and Tony makes for an idiosyncratic action hero anyway, and so there is actually no warning before the killer robot stumbles on nothing just as the power flickers from main to emergency to main again and the HUD in the Iron Man helmet goes nuts. A tiny image of Steve’s face floats overtop of some of the mess. “Captain America calling?” JARVIS says, in Tony’s ear. “Was that a question?” Tony says, horrified.

Through the bullet-proof, shatter-proof glass, Tony can see five civilians cowering behind a lab bench, although one of them is recording the whole thing on her phone, and at least two are taking energy readings and making careful notes. The fourth and fifth are crying and drinking heavily from a flask, respectively. SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS, god, they fail all the emergency drills too because they are easily distracted by interesting lab results.

GO, GO, GO,” Steve shouts, grabbing a fistful of Tony and Bruce’s shirts as he zooms by and pulling them the first few stumbling steps forward. They run. Behind them, the bottleneck corridor becomes considerably less bottlenecked; he feels the heat of the explosion on his back. He and Bruce are knocked right off their feet. Thor only braces himself, and Steve, Clint and Natasha all manage to make it look like they were totally just going to dive-roll the next few feet anyway.

Advent Daily Fic Rec -- Day 23