Tony let his fingers hang in the bend of her arm, for a second; when she kissed him, his hand slipped up to her wrist. Nothing about this felt safe, or comfortable, or even exhilarating (which, no matter how awful things had ever been, he'd always been able to count on the times before the Games to be - these were his best moments, after all), but this felt good. She could make him feel like he'd been seen. It never took much more than a gesture - a dip of the fan - and it was enough. In a life of dissimulation, truth, like all delicacies, came at a very high price; and it was worth it; and as fast as it passed across your palate, it was gone.
His hand dropped. He took up his knife and his moss again, crossing his legs toward her, at once studiously casual and an open bid to keep this close, confidential posture. "Clint, for sure," he said, bending a bobby pin in half. "Underwood I like - I mean, she's weird. But she's a good choice. Whatever careers we can get into the pack - we don't have a lot of brute force. I'll see if Whitney's still taking my calls." And the rest of the bunch would be a team effort - all the people who'd been at the table, he'd be in touch with their mentors, to the extent that it was safe; he'd find ways to assist them on his own, if it wasn't. If that was the way they wound up going, trying to extract everyone who'd committed themselves to the cause, it was just a web they'd have to figure out how to weave. Of course, that would only be a problem they had so long as Thirteen maintained its interest in the proceedings. And that interest had a very definite expiration date.
Which they should just get out into the open now, probably. "Rogers, too," he said, flat and with a certain dragging reluctance. It wasn't that he thought they were wrong. "That's the deal. With Thirteen. They'll spring us if he's still breathing." If not, it went without saying, no go. No, they weren't wrong - if Tony had been masterminding a revolution (which, he flattered himself, he rather had been, if in a guest conductor capacity), he'd have wanted Rogers alive, too. He couldn't fault them for being pragmatic, for only agreeing to spend their resources on something they thought likely to get them a return. He was particularly unwilling to fault them for it when it meant he might get to shove Jarvis on a hovercraft and get him the hell out of the Capitol. But that didn't mean it sat right. That didn't mean he didn't want to punch someone - someone tall, and broad, and blond - in the mouth for kicking this mess up in the first place, proceeding to loudly proclaim his willingness to die, and then managing to be the one person who had a free ride out, no questions asked.
But: game faces. "They had a lot of interesting shit to say," he pressed on, as though there was any chance that little wrinkle in the plot might just float by unremarked upon. His grimace didn't even pretend to be a smile, as he wedged a frill of lichen into a slightly more aesthetically pleasing position. "It's been - educational. Bunch of sanctimonious fucks, if you ask me."