Tony let out something between a scoff and a laugh, dropping his chin to his chest for a moment, tensing - as though squeezing his eyes shut and rolling his shoulders would clear all of this away like the fog of a bad hangover. "He has kind of a history of demanding a fair fight." Whatever that meant. But if there was anything he himself had in spades, the willingness to cut corners, fly in the face of principle, and find shortcuts to unreachable places were all up there. If there was anything he could teach Rogers (aside from more or less everything), stacking the odds was it. And really, if you thought of Rogers more as a piece of a machine, as a tool rather than an autonomous unit, certain things did start to fall into place -
Of course, it was still a ridiculous idea. Terrifying. Tony had more than his share of scars from tools flying out of his hands, from pieces of machinery blowing up in his face. (Although, naturally, he'd erased almost all of them.) In the comfort and relative safety of his own home, in a place where he felt sure enough to consider someone else's point of view, it was one thing. In the harsh light of day, outside, in practice, it was likely to be something else entirely.
But if Jarvis wanted to try - it wasn't that Tony felt he owed him this, exactly. (He owed him a lot, but quantifying that debt was a really quick way to get really deep in a bottle.) But he owed him at least the same thing he always had: a willingness to effect for him the things he couldn't effect for himself. It was partly Tony's fault he couldn't do them in the first place, after all. It was only fair.
And, most importantly, he wasn't stupid.
"Give me ... a couple days," he said, against all his better judgment, muttering into his hand as he rubbed at his jaw. "If he pulls some boneheaded stunt, I want to have something in place. A couple days." He looked up at him over his fingers, a little harsh with fatigue. "And then - a conversation. That's all. Here. He wouldn't know a discreet location if it had a neon sign."
And if it went the wrong way, he'd just have to figure out how to clean it up quietly. That, at least, he was confident he could manage without help.