WHO: Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, and a package of sunflower seeds. WHEN: A few days ago? WHERE: Fort Neill WHAT: Steve and Tony cross paths, have a chat. Tony invites him over to his house. WARNINGS: Pretty low, if I remember correctly. STATUS: gdoc, complete!
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Steve was on guard duty from 6am til noon. It wasn’t so bad, short shift, watching for anything that would come through. People passed through confused, but were quickly whisked away. Nothing dangerous popped out. He wondered if maybe they should be doing patrols, since portals had opened all over the town on Sunday.
He’d let the people in charge deal with that. It was nice to not be one of the people in charge for once. To just be a soldier. When noon rolled around, Steve took his time leaving the base. He mosied to the small break room that might have been a large closet at one point. A vending machine had been shoved inside. Steve pumped a few quarters in and selected some sunflower seeds. When he bent over to retrieve them, he was suddenly aware someone had just entered. Without looking, he spoke up, “Afternoon.”
Tony had been working more or less nonstop since waking up in the bedroom of his dearly departed Malibu mansion. Hackathons, data dumps, the industrial sized arc reactor, Bucky's arm. Drowning in the work felt so natural, he didn't have time to contemplate the circumstances that demanded it, which was probably for the best. He was spending more time at the base lately, overseeing the preliminary setup for the reactor, and had grown tired of hearing grumblings about the inadequacy of the coffee situation. This afternoon he arrived with a new coffeemaker in hand and a smug smile at the satisfaction of knowing there would be no mistaking where it came from. You really could buy anything on the internet.
It felt slightly serendipitous that Tony entered the breakroom while Steve was there. He hadn't seen the other man since they arrived in Texas, though they had briefly chatted on the network. "Afternoon?" he asked, slipping past Steve, though not without a slight, unconscious glance at his backside, and set the box with the coffeemaker in it loudly onto the tiny countertop. Tony had not slept yet, and was wholly unaware of what time of day it was.
Steve did a double take, nodding at the person, then looking back to realize it was Tony. “Afternoon, just past noon, Tony. Don’t you have a watch?” There was a slight smirk on his face, but Steve was never smug. Well, not too often.
“What is that?” he asked as he fiddled with the tube of sunflower seeds. The package wouldn’t open, so he raised it to his mouth and used his teeth to rip the plastic. “It looks like bad news, especially since you were carrying it.” He thought it was okay to joke with Tony, because of their golfing trip and his own admittance of missing him. Steve knew they weren’t exactly friends again, which is why he was laying it on thick when he teased. He wanted them to be friends again.
Steve took a seat in one of the metal folding chairs pulled away from the table that was somehow squeezed into the room.
Tony raised his arm to look at his watch, confirming what Steve had said, then looked over at him with a shrug. "Long night."
He watched Steve rip open the packaging with his mouth, half expecting the plastic to tear open entirely and send seeds flying all over the room. He often wondered how the super soldier managed to reign in his strength the way he did. At his teasing, Tony raised his brow and scoffed in mock outrage. "It's only bad news if you're some sort of heathen with an aversion to coffee." He removed the coffeemaker from the box with all of the flair of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. All that was missing was the tada!
He didn't mind that Steve had resumed joking with him, as if the events of the last few months had never happened. It felt natural to slip back into their old rapport, something Tony had noticed right away after he arrived on the cruise ship. But while he hadn't been ready to move forward then, he and Steve had since come to a sort of understanding. And Steve, persistent as ever, had seized upon the opportunity to try to repair their friendship. Tony couldn't guarantee a favorable outcome, but he wasn't going to fault the guy anymore for trying.
Steve struggled with the plastic between his teeth, watching Tony look at his watch. Tony’s expectations were correct, as he tugged on it a little too hard and exploded with seeds everywhere. Steve’s shoulders drooped and he resembled a kicked puppy. “--That’s a watch?” He then leaned down and started to scoop the seeds up, throwing them into the trash bin squished up against the vending machine.
The coffee machine got a quirked eyebrow. “I don’t know why I didn’t already know it would look like that, to be honest.” Tony was so annoying that it was almost comical, almost endearing. Maybe it was endearing, but Steve wouldn’t admit it so easily. He reminded Steve of his father, another thing he wouldn’t tell Tony. Howard was charismatic as all get out and you couldn’t help but smile when he did. Tony’s smile was like that.
“During Christmas, I got Bucky and Sam candles. You know those prayer candles with Mary on them? I found some with their images on them. It might be blasphemy but it made for a good joke.” His cheeks were still pink from the snack incident moments ago.
"Oh, that was beautiful," Tony laughed good-naturedly, looking around the dingy little room as if searching for something. "Where's JARVIS when you need him for the instant replay?" Steve was on his own for the seed cleanup. "Of course it's a watch. What's it look like?" A collector, Tony knew the thing was actually rather un-watchlike in appearance. That was part of its appeal.
He looked at the coffeemaker still in his hands. "Well, I wasn't about to buy the Captain America one." He set it down and pulled out a box of K-Cups from the larger box and tossed them thoughtlessly onto the counter beside the coffeemaker.
"I guess it pays to be a fictional character in this world. The possibilities for gag gifts are endless." Tony gave Steve a genuine smile then, a break from all the bravado. It seemed like a fair exchange for the sad dog routine. "So how's guard duty treating you? Nat's trying to rope me into pulling my weight. She's hard to say no to." It wasn't that Tony didn't want to do his share. On the contrary, he was deeply concerned about the potential threat the portal posed. But he thought his talents could best be put to use on the R&D side of things.
There were a few remaining seeds in the package, and Steve put one in his mouth, between his front teeth. There wasn’t a nice and tidy way to eat sunflowers seeds. “Yeah, yeah, just don’t tell anyone, people think I’m a symbol or something.” Captain America his ass. Bucky had made fun of him when he said he wanted to be called Nomad. It was poetic, he thought.
That smile, Steve grinned around his sunflower seed, cracking it with his teeth before he was prepared. Whoops. He regained his composure for a second to finish eating the seed. “Guard duty. I don’t know, I like it. It’s grunt work, but I feel like I’d rather be the first thing a person sees, a friendly face. And if it’s a baddie, then I hope I’m the last thing it sees.” Steve tried to smile then, so that Tony knew it was all talk. He was kinder than he appeared in battle.
“Natasha’s very hard to say no to. --Have you met Shuri yet? I think you’d like her brain.” When Steve was in Wakanda, he only momentarily met the young woman, but he knew enough about her that she was a genius. Maybe even more so than Tony.
"A symbol of what? Capable snacking?" Tony eyed Steve with faked pity. "I don't think anyone is falling for your poster boy routine anymore." It wasn't meant as a slight, merely a reflection on the fact that there was more to the man than his (former) title. It had taken him a while to realize that when they first met, just as it had taken Steve some time to realize that Tony was more than what his reputation suggested.
He took Steve's boastful talk in stride, not believing it for a second. "Sounds like a lot of standing around when I could be doing something useful." He began pushing a stray sunflower seed around the surface of the table for something to do with his hands. "The Wakandan wunderkind? Yeah, we met. I made a less than stellar first impression." Tony gestured as if to say that he was unbothered by such things. "She's rather protective of the fruits of that brain of hers." Not that he blamed her per se. Still, the secrecy surrounding the technological advances of the African country had a Pavlovian effect on him, where he needed to know more. Another reason he was thankful to be busy. There was no time for him to wind up doing something he might regret later.
Steve shrugged absently, trying not to look at Tony’s face. “They still call me Captain here. I’ve asked them not to.” He swept a stray seed off his lap. “That or War Criminal, it switches depending on the day.” One of Steve’s eyebrows perked up. He was attempting a joke.
“It’s standing around, but there was a lot of that during the war as well. It isn’t always about being busy.” He exhaled deeply out of his nose, realizing he was slipping into talking about ‘the war’ again. He hated that. He was supposed to be living in the now. He was a part of this century, whether he liked it or not.
He was going to mention the fact that Shuri helped Bucky, but he decided to steer away from the subject of Bucky. But then-- he couldn’t help it. “Bucky and Natasha moved in with the Wakandas.” He looked a little forlorn. “My Bucky, not … the other one.”
Prior to the events of that summer, Tony had generally referred to Steve affectionately as Cap, even when they weren't on missions. But since their falling out, he had not been able to bring himself to use the old nickname again. Steve might have left the Captain American mantle behind in that Siberian bunker along with his shield, but Tony never thought Steve could walk away from it all together. Before being abducted by the portal, he had even been working on a new prototype shield to replace the one that had been broken. His therapist had tried to convince him that it was a therapeutic metaphor for his friendship with Steve, which made sense some days and seemed like total bullshit on others. Tony raised his brow to match Steve's. "War Criminal has stuck back home, I'm afraid. Though, admittedly, it's not as catchy as Captain America."
"Have you met me, Steve? Do I seem like the kind of guy to benefit from not having something to keep me busy?" He didn't mind hearing old war stories, whether from Steve or his father and Peggy when he was growing up. "What did you do with all your standing around?"
Tony didn't recoil at the mention of Bucky like he would have done when he first arrived. After all, he had agreed to design and build a replacement arm for the Bucky Steve referred to as "the other one." But it would be a mistake to assume that meant all was well and that Tony hadn't been spending late nights staring at the original arm on his workbench and recalling what it looked like squeezing the life from his mother. No. All was not well, but like a cat, Tony was good at hiding that fact. "So I heard. Feeling left out by the cool kids at school?"
“That’s too bad,” he said shaking his head. Steve really didn’t like feeling that he was on the wrong side of history. He didn’t like that it looked as if he betrayed his country. He didn’t trust the government anymore. Knowing that HYDRA so easily stayed alive within SHIELD was disheartening to say the least. He thought he was right for awhile, but after having some time to think about it, and think about what Tony went through-- he wasn’t sure. He wouldn’t take back what he had done, but he wasn’t sure if it was completely right.
“I have a non lethal weapon and I’m lobbying to be allowed a book,” he said with a smirk. Steve watched Tony and absently went to touch his chin-- still surprised to find the beard there every time.
Calling the second Bucky ‘the other one’ was just his way of separating his feelings. Being in love with ‘the other one’ made him feel better than thinking he was in love with the Bucky he grew up with. It was a very complicated feeling. He was in love with Bucky in general, but his Bucky went through different things, had different feelings. Knowing that the other one had a relationship with a Steve made Steve think that it was all right to feel the way he did. “--No, I don’t feel left out. It just means I have to walk farther to talk to them.”
Tony shrugged unsympathetically. He had given Steve plenty of opportunities to avoid that outcome. A fact he was sure Steve was aware of, so there was no point rubbing his nose in it, no matter how tempting that might be.
"I know something about the more colorful ways the Howling Commandos spent their downtime. I don't think light reading was on the menu. Of course, there's a high probability those stories were greatly embellished." Tony was certain the truth was much tamer, perhaps even boring. He preferred the stories.
"You are living at the Compound, right? Wouldn't mind coming over to see what you lot have done with the place." He was glad that the portal had seen fit to spit out his own accommodations. Shacking up at the Compound with the others would not have been pleasant.
“Well, there’s no one to play card games with, and I don’t really like the games on my phone.” He held his thumbs up and wiggled them, “Too small for my old eyes.” Though, the mention of the Howling Commandos had him smiling-- even if Tony was shrugging at him like that.
“I live at the Compound, yeah. Apparently I was here once before and don’t remember it, but my room was left the way it was. And my credit card was maxed out thanks to Rocket.” Steve rubbed the back of his neck in a very ‘aw geez’ gesture.
Steve dodged the whole ‘Wanda’s not a big fan of yours, I’ll have to sneak you in’ part that he wanted to say and skipped right to the good part, “Yeah, come over some time. It hasn’t changed much.”
"If that's you dropping a hint that you want me to pop in at six in the morning to play Monopoly with you, I'm gonna have to pass. What's with the red-eye shift, anyway?" Not that Tony had real room to criticize. He was often up in the wee hours of the morning, though usually because he had not slept yet.
Tony let out a chuckle that was more like a snort. "Bummer. Did he buy anything you can swipe?" He wasn't worried about Wanda anymore. After her initial greeting, they had managed to avoid one another entirely since he arrived. He had a feeling she would make herself scarce if he showed up. "It's far less confrontational at my place," he mentioned as a lame sort of invitation. "You never did come down to Malibu for one of my parties, did you? Though, they were a lot more tame than they used to be while you were busy taking your ice nap." Back before Tony had choked on his silver spoon and had his blinders removed. Before Iron Man. Before his priorities were rearranged.
“Oh no, I go to work at six. Monopoly takes at least five hours to complete.” Steve was going to wink but then thought better of it. He’d probably look like he had something stuck in his eye. “It’s not really red-eye shift, it’s just a morning shift. Six to twelve. Not so bad. Can take a nap if I need it, but let’s be real, I don’t.”
At the thought of Rocket stealing his credit card, Steve thought, “I don’t think he bought anything I’d be interested in. The credit card company hasn’t contacted me, either, so I might not exist here.” He shrugged, then tossed the sunflower seed package, now empty, into the small trash can. “No, I’ve never been to one of your famous parties. Just the one where we all tried to lift Thor’s hammer.” He didn’t mention Ultron. Sore spot. “I could come by your place sometime, you can show me what came with you.” It seemed easier than sneaking him past Wanda.
"Nah," Tony replied to Steve's napping comment. "You're pretty spry for a centenarian. It's obnoxious, really." He slid his hands into the pockets of his pants and leaned against the counter. Removed from the obligations of the "real world," he was much more dressed down here than he had been back home. In a t-shirt and jeans, he gave off a sort of care-free vibe that had been perfected over years of practice. "Well you're in luck. Next month is my birthday. Two Tony Starks, twice the fun." It didn't matter that it had only been September where he came from. "But any time you want to drop by in the mean time, the door's open. Usually because Bruce has forgotten to close it, but you know what I mean."
Steve’s smile was lopsided, only half his face reacting to Tony’s words. “With two Buckys, I’m sure my birthday’s going to be ridiculous. I’m turning 100. Or 33.” His silly smiled stayed there as he watched Tony lean against the counter. He stood up from his uncomfortable chair and went back to the vending machine. He fed a dollar into the machine and let another package of sunflower seeds drop.
“I’ll come by sometime, Tony,” he said, almost reassuringly. “But for now, the rest of the day awaits.” There wasn’t a uniform policy for Fort Neill yet, but Steve had on a nice button up and khakis. First impressions were everything, weren’t they? He retrieved the snack from the bottom of the machine. “It was nice talking to you.” He tried to make eye contact-- really drive it home, not just some passing thing someone says. It was nice. Really nice.
"I hope I make the guest list." Tony watched Steve at the vending machine and smirked when he chose sunflower seeds again. Persistent as always. He pushed away from the counter and reached over to grab the now empty box he had arrived with. He held Steve's gaze a moment, then clapped him amicably on the shoulder, the way he had done many times before. "You too, Steve." Dropping his hand, he made his way out the door, before popping his head back into the room for a quick, "Good luck with the seeds this time."