Who: Steve Rogers (Captain America) and Tony Stark (Iron Man) When: Recently (March… 29 or so) Where: Steve’s place What: Bros before Hos Rating/Warning: Low/None Status: Complete
The suit. Oh, God, the suit. It was like coming home. Tony had a lot of work to do. He was going to build an underground bunker at his home for suits and plans and computers and all of the myriad of things he needed to recreate everything from his dreams, but for now he had the suit. That was the start of it. There was this suit, and the suit he and Jarvis had been building, but that was child’s play compared to this piece of gold and red artwork. Wearable, customized, artwork of armor and … goodness. It made Tony’s mind go blank. He was excited.
Wearing the suit, he headed to Steve’s place and knocked on the front door.
Steve was doing nothing. It had been a rough few days, between the incident in Irvine and whatever was going on with Bucky and now Natasha was involved and - well. It was a lot. Even for Captain America, who was, admittedly, not anywhere close yet to the man he was in his dreams. But he was trying.
He’d just settled in to watch something on TV when there was a knock on the door. Getting up, he left the television on and answered the door and blinked. And blinked some more. His eyes ran up the suit and back down, settling on the always stoic face-plate.
“-- Tony?”
“Who else would it be?” The voice came from behind the face-plate. Then it opened to reveal the jovial Tony Stark, grinning at his friend. “I suppose you’re not known for your smarts, are you, Captain?” He kidded. Really, he was kidding. Tony was just a little sharper when he was this happy.
Steve couldn’t really respond. He was too busy staring at a sight that was, really, straight out of his dreams. Well, sort of. The Iron Man he knew had a different suit or two, but still. It was incredible. “Where did this come from? Did you - build this? Here?”
“No. It just arrived. From the dreams.” Tony said. Then he gave a slightly exaggerated sigh. “So… are you going to invite me in, then? Or make me stand out here in the cold?”
Not really sure what else to do, Steve just kept staring as he stepped out of the way to let Tony inside. Or Iron Man. Steve figured that, like this, he should probably refer to him as Iron Man.
“That’s a hell of a dream gift.”
“I don’t know what I did to deserve such a gift, truthfully,” Tony said, giving his hand a little wave as he walked into steve’s place. Once he was inside he glanced around, wondering if he’d ever been in here before. Maybe not. He turned back to his friend. “Pretty amazing, isn’t it? Just like the Dreams.”
“Yeah.” Steve finally managed to stop staring enough to close the door and clear his throat. “Well, in my dreams, when we finally meet, I think you have a different one? And you end up with … I don’t really remember the name of it, to be honest. But it’s pretty neat.”
“I’ve got plans on improving the suit from the inside out in the Dreams, so it wouldn’t surprise me if I made more of these.” Tony said, moving through the place to find Steve’s sofa. So he could sit. “It’s pretty impressive. I’m not sure if some of these components even exist in this world.”
After a moment, Steve figured he shouldn’t be a bad host and he walked toward the kitchen, trying not to think about the fact that Iron Man was sitting on his couch. “Do you want a drink or something?” As he opened the fridge, he leaned over, peering back into the living room. “How heavy is that thing, anyway?”
“You know, I haven’t stepped on a scale,” Tony responded. He flipped the faceplate of the suit up so he could get some fresh air and take another look around Steve’s living room. “...I’m all right,” he added, about the drink, though now his mind was on how much the thing must weigh. Maybe he shouldn’t be sitting on Steve’s sofa, just in case.
“Well, does it feel heavy?” Steve got himself a glass of bottled smoothie and leaned against the entrance to the kitchen, tiltings his head a bit. “I mean. It can’t exactly be light, carrying all that around.”
“Nah, not really.” Tony sat up a little when Steve came back in. “It’s got thrusters in all of the joints, so… the thing pretty much keeps itself going.” It was hard to explain how intricately the suit paid attention to Tony’s own muscle movements, and mimicked those. “It’s almost as if it knows what I’m doing, and does it for me.”
“Neat,” Steve said. He sort of understood, at least the idea that the suit was an extension of Tony. That was what Steve’s shield felt like to him. He could manipulate pretty well at this point, like second nature. “Hey, uh, now that you have a real suit and all, there’s something I want to ask you.”
“Somehow that statement makes me feel nervous.” Tony said, only half playfully, and closed his faceplate again for emphasis. “Shoot.”
Steve just smiled and shook his head, because, honestly, Tony was ridiculous. Then he cleared his throat and shifted his weight to his other foot . “I’ve been recruited officially by the Agency a few weeks ago to head my own response team. I have full discretion when it comes to filling up the roster, and I’d like you to be the first name on that list.”
Behind the faceplate, Tony’s eyebrows raised. Be a part of The Agency? Under Steve’s unquestionably good leadership? He paused for a moment to consider. “I dunno. I’ve been told that I’m a loose canon. You sure you want that on your team?”
“Tony, at this point, I couldn’t imagine anyone else on it.” Steve gave Tony a slight smile. It was true, they’d probably have their disagreements, but Steve knew that when push came to shove, they’d both come around to see eye to eye. “I could really use someone like you.”
Tony nodded. Well, it was difficult to do in the suit, but somehow he managed. “All right. You’ve got me, then.” They worked well together--their response to the bombing at the mall proved that. And who wouldn’t want Iron Man on their team? Well, someone who knew how much mischief Tony Stark could get into, maybe? Someone else, anyway?
“Just not like that. Get your mind out of the gutter, Rogers.”
Steve just shook his head and laughed, but there was a look of relief on his face. “I wouldn’t dream of it, Stark.”