"What an admirable display of restraint," Tony muttered, trying not to imagine the various mechanisms by which Rogers was planning to feel out these putative dissenters. He capped the decanter, and concentrated far too hard on setting it back in its proper place - not because he was too drunk to navigate his own bar, but because it was a few moments he could steal in not turning back around to engage with the man behind him. Reining in his attitude was a tall order at the best of times; with Rogers, as they'd established over, and over, and over again, it was even more of a reach; and in cases like these, where he wasn't even entirely convinced of the value of doing so - well, if he shot his mouth off while someone was literally dangling his life in front of him in a syringe, what were his odds when the risks and rewards were so much more abstract, so much further down the line?
This was the trouble: he didn't think this was a good idea. It was the best option to be dug out of a pile of garbage; it was better than doing nothing while hanging onto life by an ever-thinning thread. It was all there was, but he didn't like it. It wasn't something he wanted. All the compelling reasons why he should get himself into this mess of trouble he understood very clearly, but that was different than the sorts of things that sent him flying head over heels through every obstacle and objection. Second thoughts weren't usually in his repertoire, but in this instance, he he'd barely had a first thought.
And as much as he had to admit that Rogers possessed something that spoke to people (not entirely excluding himself, although in his case, the transmission was a little fuzzy) ... he wasn't going to be the one to convince Tony. And he shouldn't have been expected to be. That wasn't why he'd been asked here. It was hardly fair to act shocked that his tactics were a little thin, when Tony was supposed to be offering him tactics. It was hardly fair to expect him to paint a picture Tony could give a fuck about when his specialty for the past thirty years had been not giving a fuck.
Essentially: these were problems that had been anticipated. They shouldn't have been major roadblocks, not now. Tony just didn't have the velocity going to get over them.
But - maybe that was something he could bring to the table. How was that for irony? Tony Stark: slowing shit down. He put the decanter back in its tray, turned on his heel, and leaned back against the bar, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. He was looking generally in the area of Rogers' shoes, anticipating that this wasn't going to be something his guest was thrilled to hear. "My suggestion," he began, slowly, "is that you don't reach out to anyone. Not in the Capitol. Here, all it takes is one person deciding he wants a handshake from the President, and - boom, you're dead. You need a sense of the numbers you have in the Districts. All of them. If you don't have that, you're fucked anyway. I could give you an army's worth of weapons - and I will, I mean. Why not, right." The sarcasm in his voice was thick enough that he apparently felt the need to wash it down with a couple ounces of whiskey. "But it won't matter if you don't have the bodies. You need to take a step back and do a lot of recon."
Or that would just kill the whole thing in its crib, he wasn't really sure. But he was still clinging to safety, even if it was mostly a subconscious decision. He was still resisting crossing that line.