Who: Tony Stark & Steve Rogers What: A phone call. When: The day after the Quell announcement.
Tony was no stranger to bad dreams. They didn't particularly bother him; a few panicky minutes and a stretch of restless hours made almost no difference to his sleep habits - he was as likely to be running on two-hours' shut-eye because of work as for any other reason. He coped with them like he'd have coped with a habitual cough (which was to say, not at all). He'd even come to take some pleasure in the relief they produced upon waking up - the realization that, in fact, one was safe, and could lie comfortably in a bed that seemed even more a luxury than usual when compared to the horrors one's brain had dreamed up. It was a nice feeling. It was - cozy.
And it wasn't how he felt this morning. No, today he'd woken up to a daylight that seemed unusually cold, and a state of affairs that refused to dissolve with the darkness. He didn't lay around at all, not really. He got up, pulled on his robe, snagged the cigarettes out of a little tray in his closet, and went straight out to the balcony off his bedroom, leaving the door gaping open behind him.
It was windy up here, as always. Chilly. But he hardly noticed; he leaned out over his railing to glance across the lake to the surrounding mountains - neglecting, for the first time in a little while, to think at all about what lay beyond them. That felt kind of nice. After a while, he turned his eyes down to the streets below, which seemed to him a bit indistinct. Whether it was haze or just grogginess, he couldn't have said. He spent a few moments tracking the glint of a single car up an avenue - and he pulled his phone out of his pocket, and he called Steve Rogers.
They had some shit to talk about. What good would it do? Probably none. But right now he felt almost eerily numb, and he knew that if he went off to the kitchen, instead, what he found would probably just make him feel frightened, or miserable, or - best case scenario - give him the prompting he needed to buck up and move forward, to start making arrangements to best ensure he would get the fuck out of this alive. And right now ... he really thought he might rather just feel angry.
Steve was always good for that. He lit up (after a couple false starts with the lighter); his mouth turned down around his cigarette at the click on the other end of the line. "Morning, sunshine."