#tony threads

It was a 3 am call. It wasn’t like she wasn’t prepared, knowing that this was part of the job. Nothing coffee couldn’t do. And she was getting quicker too, beating her record time this one around or at least that’s what JARVIS said. El was pretty proud of that.

She gave a soft smile, something between nurturing and almost teasing. “Is that a promise?” She smirked, head tilted to the side.

“Well, I’m here anyway, Tony. You’re not getting rid of me that easily. I’m stubborn like that.”

“Oh, I’m not stupid enough to promise you anything, Ms. Roux. You’re too sharp for that. I don’t like losing bets.” Glad to see her, Tony smiled over the shoulder of armor he was currently wiggling out of. She looked tired--though not that tired. Maybe he’d gotten lucky, and it was 6am. 5 at worst. Or not. “Did I do it again?” He looked to his watch only to find there was nothing on his wrist. There was, however, quite a lot of blood, motor oil, and half of an Iron Man gauntlet. “Huh.” 

“The time is 3:24am, Sir,”  JARVIS helpfully supplied. 

"So, I did. It’s the no window thing.” He spun one finger to indicate the cement-walled, high-security workshop, underground, bullet proof glass on the sliding doors, the whole shebang. Less for keeping people out--though it was for that too, with a grand four people gifted entrance codes, El now included--but also to keep things in: like explosions, nanobots, scientific experiments gone wrong, and any coffee he may or may not one day make sentient. “And the fighting acid-spitting dragon-lizard men thing. Hard to keep track of time flying around in the dark. I’d say it won’t happen again but..” He shrugged. As Tony rarely ever slept, and as he often fell into work binges two to three days long with no sense of time, they both knew it would. 

Of course, it does sting.

But pain had become a reoccurrence for them, hadn’t it? It barely phased Steve anymore. His body had been pushed, twisted, and slotted into impossible spaces when needed. He had become the hero that everyone desired him to be. Symbolic and a sign of hope, the weight of such a label written over the bruises knuckles and cracked ribs. Not dead - not even close. Held together by bandages and fierce determination.

Steve smiles because that’s what he does. Reassure anyone, especially Tony, that it’s going to be fine. The bad guy was defeated and they could all rest well knowing they had done their best. It’s the pressing and insurmountable weight of the cost of their decisions. The ones who hadn’t lived so others may. Steve feels the tear of his busted lip as his smile widens by habit, not quite meeting his blue eyes.

“You don’t have to.” He says but he is sure Tony knows. He is more durable than most. Been through a lot damn worse. How was Tony? Was he fine under that focused gaze? Was his mind here in the present with Steve or already calculating the next move they’d all need to make to ensure this never happens again? “Hey,” Steve finally manages breaking his thoughts to grab Tony’s wrist (gently) as his head cocks slightly to the side, “You good?” He asks. Tony was definitely the type to throw himself into tasks to keep busy. To keep his mind overloaded. He was the breakable one, was he not? “Before you go all nurse on me, how are you? You took a beating too.”

Crouching in front of Steve, Tony pressed the washcloth as gently as he could to Steve’s temple. It would heal--he knew that; it always did--but that didn’t make him feel any better about watching Steve throw himself into battle like a loose Lego piece: fully ready to be broken apart and put back together again, so overconfident that he'd be alright in the end that he’d let the whole concept of self preservation go out the damn window. And they called Tony reckless. 

“Don’t.” Tony batted away Steve’s hand on his wrist, no matter how good it felt to have him close again, to know that he even could hold him like this, that he wasn’t too far gone. “Don’t you dare. You don’t get to play knock knock jokes on death’s door and then play the paranoid teammate. It’s my turn. And I swear to god, Steve, if you don’t let me ‘go all nurse on you,’ I’ll kick your ass myself.” Maybe he was a hypocrite to say it, and maybe it was stupid--Steve could take care of himself better than anyone Tony had ever known; his super soldier healing made sure of it--but he couldn’t help the way his weak old heart was pounding away on the other side of the arc reactor. Watching Steve fall like that had been one of the worst things he’d ever seen--and he’d seen the Hulk naked. 

“Did you just dick-kick Goose Man?” Sometimes Tony hated that he lived in a world where that sentence was possible. He wasn’t surprised that another weird animal-bred super villain with the world’s most uncreative name was once again causing petty trouble in Manhattan. He wasn’t surprised that said Bird-Boy-Whatever-His-Name-Was was already aprehended and Iron Man had barely broken a sweat. What he was surprised about was Lily’s seeming inability to hold tight and wait for the bad guys to be taken down without her throwing herself into the fight. Okay, scratch that. He wasn’t surprised. He just wished he was. 

Maybe he had been the first time, when he’d thought some kid was waving him down in a newsboy cap and running shoes only to find his high school sweetheart, grinning and over excited by her first villain take down. He’d been 76% sure he was going to have a heart attack then and there and not just because he hadn’t seen her in ten years, but because she could have died. 

Now she was just making a habit of it. 

Tony landed beside her, jetboots cooling as he touched down on the pavement. “You know your job is to report the news, not make it, right?” Tony winced--not that she could see it through the face plate--as he had JARVIS scan her for injuries. Not that he needed a superpowered AI to see the way her cheek had swollen. “I’m going to kill him,” Tony said, though not before turning of the voice projector so only JARVIS could hear him. 

“I would like to remind you, Sir, that murder is not recommended in your current line of work. And Miss Evan’s injuries are extremely minor. I believe the human saying in times like these is ‘you should see the other guy.’” 

“JARVIS, remind me to disable your sass protocols.”

He turned his attention--and his mic--back to Lily. “You need a hospital. I can call you an ambulance, but it’d be a lot faster for me to fly you there. I promise I’ll be gentle.” If only she could see him winking. 

Sometimes their jobs get the better of them. It’s stressful to say the least. They have so many responsibilities and so many lives in their hands that the weight of that can get even the best of them. But Tony - he was different. Although his mind was far greater than any of theirs his body had it’s own toll taken. Steve sometimes forgets what it was like to be fragile. He would never admit to Tony without the suits he may or may not consider him breakable. It didn’t really matter if he said it or not, the worry was painted across his face as clear as day. Tony only had to be looking to see: Steve worried about him. “Here.” He’s scooping a bit of food supplied one of Tony’s people which went largely untouched as they talked about work related things. Avengers this, Shield that, blah blah. “You haven’t even touched your food.” He waits fork out for Tony to take a bite. “All this other stuff can wait. When is the last time you’ve slept?”

The team needed new outfitting--and not just for branding, though Tony had been pushing for that too (apparently he was not allowed to call the team Stark’s Avengers, and no one seemed overly eager to switch out their color scheme to the clearly superior gold and red). What they needed was newer, better armor, Stark made armor: Tony needed to upgrade Widow’s bites, Rhodey’s blasters, the kid’s webshooters, make Hulk some pants that actually stayed on through a fight (naked Hulk was a PR disaster). He’d have upgraded Steve’s shield too, if Cap ever let him get his hands on it. “Space proof, Steve. Everyone needs to be space proof.” Too busy working the schematics, Tony had barely looked up when of the Stark interns brought them lunch. He’d thanked the kid on autopilot more than anything, then gone right back to studying the plans floating before him on a holographic computer screen. But when Steve spoke, Tony listened. He didn’t always like what he heard, and he didn’t always agree, but he listened; Tony gave Steve the sort of attention he usually reserved for science: 110% genius focus. The same couldn’t be said for most people. “I don’t need sleep,” he said, shooting the fork held out to him a single raised eyebrow. “Einstein slept three hours a year. I’m fine.” This was not technically true, but the chances of Steve personally knowing Einstein were minimal--probably. 

But Steve wasn’t the type to back down--and the food did smell good. Tony took a bite off the offered fork then, suddenly feeling very hot around the collar, focused his attention determinedly back on the schematics. He shouldn’t be so surprised; they were teammates, after all, and that was what teammates did, wasn’t it? Take care of one another? “When did you become the Avenger’s Mother Hen?” he mumbled. 

“I’m fine. I don’t need--ow!” Tony tried to shrug her off, but the blow to the head had him just dizzy enough to decide sitting back down was the right call. For now. “I didn’t ask you to come here. Just to set the record straight here. And the A.I. that called you,” he said, raising his voice, as if JARVIS couldn’t pick up the tiniest phonon of sound, “is getting downgraded. I’m going to put him in a desktop PC. I’m going to put him in a Blackberry and then throw the Blackberry into the ocean.” 

“I am just trying to protect you, Sir,” came the A.I’s voice. 

Tony rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure. I had it perfectly under control.” All around them, Tony’s workshop was a mess, a scattered explosion of loose gears and tools that had certainly seen better days, but none of it came close to the damage of Tony’s face which looked like he’d stumbled into a boxing match and not come out on top. Tony didn’t like accepting help on a good day, and he certainly didn’t want to explain to Carol now why (and how) he’d been attacked in his own lab and never even tried to grab the Iron Man armor or fight back. Or why there was an empty bottle of vodka on the desk, fallen over and still dripping sickeningly over a few old blueprints. He hadn’t drank any of it--yet-- and it wasn’t even his, but it was exactly why he didn’t want Carol here of all people. 

“You know,” Tony frowned, looking through the crowd of geniuses in their shiny best. The shrimp cocktails. The actual cocktails. The band. The intolerable men waving him over to ‘talk shop’. “I’m not sure it will.” This had once been Tony’s scene, and he still knew well how to play the game, how to schmooze and flatter and talk bad people into doing the right thing, all just to end up with his picture on the front page of the morning paper with a headline questioning his motives and blaming him for a crime committed on the other side of the country for something he knew nothing about with people he’d never met.

That wasn’t the problem. The ability to slip on a mask and tolerate bad company for a greater cause was something he and Natasha had in common. If their motives were frequently misinterpreted, so be it. That he’d come without the suit--his wrist feeling uncomfortably empty without the watch to call his armor at a moment’s notice--wasn’t ideal but had been planned for. After a string of disappearances all involving brilliant scientists and engineers who specialized in sub-miniature electronics command systems, using Tony as bait had just made sense. He didn’t love the idea of being a sitting duck, and he was so used to having Iron Man on call that he felt like he’d come without a limb, but he trusted Natasha to have his back. He’d never met anyone more capable or less in need of his help. That wasn’t the problem either.

The problem was Norman Osborn and Justin Hammer had also been invited to this little shindig. “One of them better be the one behind the kidnappings,” Tony hissed to Natasha. That Tony could imagine: Hammer and an underground bunker of imprisoned geniuses to make everything he couldn’t make himself. Osborn was already running a looney-toon circus with a company that should have been declared a national threat years ago. At least that was one person Tony didn’t have to pretend to like tonight; Osborn knew full well Tony hated his guts. But if Hammer was a target too, if someone out there thought he and Hammer were in the same league, then Tony was no longer flattered to be at risk. Or remotely worried.

Tony stopped at Ms. Roux’s desk, though he was too busy looking around the lobby--he didn’t spend much time on this floor--to immediately remember what he’d come to talk to her about. It was busy down here, employees checking in through the security gates, flashing badges, chugging coffee, while tourists and fans took pictures through the windows. The floors above got more selective--and required more clearance--the higher you went in Avenger’s Tower, from the many business related floors, to the heavily guarded and protected experimental fields, to the Avenger’s quarters at the very top. 

“It’s your lunch break. Get something with vegetables this time. Your vitamin ratios are way off.” The A.I. stood directly behind Peter, his arms crossed over his chest, every inch Tony in appearance, except that he was blue and transparent and, well, not really alive. Before Tony--the real, living, human version--had snapped Thanos out of existence, he’d made A.I. Tony: a download of his mind, memories, personality, and all. And this version had no qualms with lecturing, pulling the parent-by-proximity card with far more frequency than even the living Tony had.