revivalproject

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Peel

WHO: Tony and open!
WHERE: ~~The university~~ The Brand New Avengers Mansion!
WHAT: Tony's finally putting a space together to house a team.
WHEN: Early-mid June
WARNINGS: Nothing yet, stay on your toes.

a. the foyer
Without a reliable local florist or catering company, or a very loyal butler besides, it was up to Tony to ensure the space was a welcoming one. If everyone was sufficiently distracted with a canape, then maybe they wouldn't notice the gaps in the armor, and would see this place as Tony envisioned it; a fortress, a home, and everything that Tony had to offer. For now, the door stood open to welcome anyone curious inside, and the bouquets of heavy summer flowers (maybe weeds) that Tony had stuffed into mugs and beakers on either side of it might have concealed the bolts and darkened panels that flanked it. The entrance to the university building, a long neglected structure mostly given to mothcat nests and spiders, had finally been properly cleaned, even the windows shining clear where the glass had survived, or sealed over to leave no more gaps to the elements. The space was sprawling, and the salvaged table dragged to the centre of it mostly served to make it look emptier still, propping up a lone carafe of coffee and a few plates of hastily assembled snacks. The cut fruit was probably more trustworthy. Whatever was on the other plate looked like it had been cooked too long. Tony stood beside it, frowning as he struggled to compose a text that was equally enticing and casual enough to not put absolutely everyone it was meant for on edge. Now that he had gotten this far, he was struggling to see why an Avenger would trust his invitation. He certainly wouldn't. Maybe a flirty 'u up?' was a disarming enough tactic, even with the sun streaming across the polished floor. It could hardly fill the space, barely creeping into the open doorways spilling off of the foyer, leaving the darkness a curious beckoning. "Hey, uh, hypothetically," he said at the first shadow that fell across the floor, "if you couldn't trust a word I said, I know, try to keep up, how could I convince you to stay the night?"

b. the gym
The tiered room must have once been an ampitheatre style lecture hall, big enough to host a full cohort, the awkwardly tall steps making each level of seating a sheer drop to the next. Now, it was a training room for all manner of superpowered muscles. There were targets to test aim, and punching bags to take a hit, braced around the carefully arranged mats at the cleared centre of the hall. The multi-armed A.G.R.I.I. robot waited at the corner of this sparring area, tucked imperfectly into a striped sweater that could have been evocative of a referee. Mostly, it appeared inert, like the dark cameras hidden in most corners, or flat, reflective screens staggered throughout the observation levels. There were no windows, the room entirely contained with only the entrance door from the hall, and a single break in the wall for another doorway that was at this point painted over with a large X and warning 'UNDER CONSTRUCTION'. The distinct drip of constant water could be heard beyond it. Tony had his priorities, and dressing the robot was well above finishing a functional locker room. This wasn't the kind of place for conventional work out amenities, anyway. It looked a lot more like it was prepared for a show. Tony draped himself on one of the steps, arms spread out behind him and legs stretched out to fold at the ankle, where he dipped his chin to peer down at the sparring arena over the frame of his dark glasses. "Floor's all yours," he invited. The wiggle of his fingers was subtle, and one of the flat panels nearby lit up on alert, awaiting instructions. He wasn't dressed for such a demonstration, after all; this suit's tailoring was too precise to start risking the seams, and he wasn't the one who had to earn a room in the new mansion.

c. the bedrooms
None of the demolition, wiring, or security systems were as challenging as developing the bedrooms. They were obviously the last spaces to be finished, and only a pair of them even had any furniture in them, waiting to be customized. Light fixtures still hung exposed, and if there were any soft comforts prepared they must have been protected under that lumpy tarp against the wall. The rooms were spacious, though; what must have been classrooms, flanking a bathroom that had been repurposed and divided into more private en suite spaces with the raw edges of unfinished doorways opening into the echoing tiles. These new bathrooms had to have been where all of Tony's plumbing energy had been spent. They were even fitted with massive tubs, thanks to a month spent underwater that provided a convenient collection of Hulk-sized clam shells, for the luxurious decompression that a long day of Avenging deserved. At least, Tony hoped that was a convincing selling point, because he didn't otherwise have the confidence to personalize any of the rooms, or finish anything too securely, abandoning each project before completion with the hollow awareness that it wasn't going to be good enough to work. It was all too little, too late.

Tony had to push the windows open to carry out the smell of paint and sawdust, and ease in the summer breeze from the richly green garden. At this vantage point, a floor above the ground, the imprint of what had been the hedge maze was still clear in how the grass grew, and there were distinct circles where the foliage had been scorched by rocks belched out by the volcano, flourishing now in the rich ash left behind. A mothcat that had been wrestling in the grass came flitting up curiously at the movement, landing gracefully on the windowsill. At least they appreciated the effort, and earned a scratch between the ears while they yawned. Maybe they had some nest-building advice to finish crafting the perfect bedroom with these tools and materials laying around.

d. housecalls [for Tommy and Jon]
[There's a knock at the door. Who could it be?]

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Tony really is touchy in every universe, isn't he? Steve doesn't mind leaning on him a little, as long as they're both in agreement that this is just how they behave. Maybe it is for them - he knows his Tony would've pulled away by now with a flurry of confusing fast talk to fill up the space.

"Train me into what, being able to drink normal drinks? Forget it, the poison resistance is there for a reason," he says. "But it's okay, I don't have any more of that stuff anyway."

Steve's backwards interpretation of the proposal made Tony chuckle, a low sound that was lost against Steve's shoulder as he spoke despite the cavernously empty room around them. When he could keep a straight face, Tony tipped his head back again and said, "Uh-huh, yeah, that's exactly what I meant, train your tolerance down, somehow. Is that a thing you do sometimes? Find ways to make life a little harder for yourself, for, what, the variety?" Now that he said it, Tony did have to nod with a surprised pout of understanding. He was just thinking that he liked the bruises.

Steve levels Tony with a slightly incredulous look. "Is that not something that you could title your autobiography? How you made things harder for yourself?"

Sorry Tony, he's gotta call you out sometimes.

But, despite the whole mess with Tony being upset that Steve's hiding things from him, things have actually been nice. They've somehow remained friendly. Close, even. He likes this Tony a great deal, and he thinks the other Steve must be an amazing guy to warrant Tony acting this way to a different version of him.

That was a look that Tony had to return, offended hand to his heart for this callous accusation. "That's not fair," he said, "most of the time, I'm just as surprised as anyone else what kinds of things get me hard." He smiled innocently for what he expected to be a lot of disappointed puffing, clearly too proud of himself for disrespecting Steve's hectoring entirely.

Oh, boo. Steve gives Tony's arm a little shove of dismay. But there's no real bite to it, because of course he'd stepped into that one, and he'd come to expect lewd comments from Tony at this point. But puffing, there is.

"Maybe the title should be, Tony Stark: Zero Brain to Mouth Filter."

Edited 2024-06-28 03:49 (UTC)

"Listen," Tony laughed, happily shoving Steve back with a palm to his cheek, "the embarrassing part is, that's already been iterated on, you're getting the filtered version, you should, honestly, appreciate the restraint. You're the one buying ten copies instead of working on your training, you've got that weak side, you can't be wasting time like this." It was probably always inevitable that Tony was a distraction in the gym; if Clint were here, he would have groaned the second they walked in. Maybe this Steve was still indulging him a little, as he figured him out, but the result was still the same.

"You're incorrigible," he says, but it's said fondly. "And I'm not wasting time, how is it a waste of time to buy extra copies? They ring you up at the register just as fast. Now, if I read all ten copies instead of training, you'd have a point.

"But you can also put a suit on and then see if I'm still weak in one side." Yes, that is intended to be a challenge, but mostly he's just hoping Tony rebuilds his suit.

That was Tony's fault, for reminding Steve they weren't taking things seriously enough, and he quickly went from a teasing smirk and muttering about Steve admiring his collection, that was definitely worse, to sobering and shifting awkwardly to sit up more stiffly in his seat. With his lips pursed in a guilty moue and focus roving across the mats, he said, "I told you, you've got to get Jon down here to train, focus up. It'll be like Jim, you know, you won't even be able to tell the difference. Little shorter, maybe, suit's pretty small. Efficient."

"You said Jon doesn't ever even fight," Steve counters, but clearly Tony's not in the mood to talk about the suit. Always deflecting, really, but at least he doesn't just get up and stalk off. "He just wins. I don't even know what that means."

"If you're eager to get up close and personal with the suit," Tony said, "which, I get it, no judgment here, it doesn't look like that by accident--then he's your option. You're going to have to find out what it means." Tony's flirtatious smirk lingered, but when he looked over at Steve it was with a supplicating pinch between his brows, and he tried again, "I'm just the mechanic. He's Iron Man."

Steve looks at Tony with a knit in between his brows, like he's not sure what he's hearing. Okay, their worlds are different. He gets that. But Tony is Iron Man. He's so inherently Iron Man that this is really unsettling.

Like Tony thinking that Jan doesn't exist, but Batroc does.

"With or without it. You're Iron Man."

Tony was trying to tell Steve something tangible, actionable, solve for the problem of interfacing directly with the armor, and to this day he had not figured out the best way to react when Steve responded like the issue was a romantic one. It had him taking a breath, only to bite his tongue with a laugh caught behind it, eyeing Steve with exasperated fondness for the compulsion, and with a flush for the undeserved flattery. "Give him a chance," he did his best to reroute. The last thing he wanted was for Steve to say something like that in front of Jon. "I haven't been wrong about an Avenger, have I?" He'd suggested much more questionable personalities be welcomed onto the team, and every one of them had been extraordinary.

Steve crosses his arms over his chest in response to that. "Well in my Universe, Tony created Ultron." So, yes, poor judgment calls all around. Honestly, against Steve's advice too. But to be fair to him, Steve had advised against creating Vision as well.

"I'm not saying Jon's evil, I'm just saying - you're Iron Man. Even when we have two suits on the team, Rhodey's War Machine." So it's weird to him for Tony to go into retirement and give up the handle. That's something else. That feels wrong.

The one thing that Tony had been completely sure about was his belief in his Avengers. Without any context for Ultron to even defend himself, he could only melt, sinking back into his seat and drawing his elbows in close to tap one hand anxiously over his heart. Maybe he shouldn't have been so confident about that, after all.

He didn't know how Steve could so easily go from that to the assurance that Tony could still be trusted on the team. That was the kind contradictory loyalty that would have the whole room of Avengers arguing with him, and he never did back down. Still in his slouch, Tony slid to the side until he was leaning his weight against Steve's shoulder. "You're giving me a really shitty choice, you know, Cap," he mumbled. "I thought I was finished with this fight. I don't want to pick between arguing with you, or arguing with the rest of the planet." Especially when both arguments tasted so sour, and as much as he didn't know how to tell Steve to be more reasonable, it felt even more daunting to try to claim he deserved to put the armor on again.

"You've never cared about arguing everyone else before," he answers. "Or to argue against me, for that matter. Tony, who knows you better than I do? I don't mean factually - that'd be Jan, probably. But I know the kind of man you are. Which means I know it's a shitty choice, but I trust you to make it."

He knows Tony's hung up the helmet before, but, before it was usually about trying to strike a balance with his life. It doesn't seem like that's the case. This is more like a lack of trusting himself. And the only way Steve knows how to deal with that is to place his trust in Tony for him.

Tony had to sit up again to get a better look at Steve, looking mildly peeved at the effectiveness of asking who knew him better after having to be the one to remind him just how willing he should have been to fight on both fronts. Steve was the one that remembered as much, while Tony was busy feeling too lost and useless to fight. Up until Steve showed up, everyone had spent years convincing Tony that he should have been ashamed for fighting at all.

"Maybe the Tony you knew, he's a better person than I am..." he still had to hedge, because he did know that much was true, but he was looking away again without the will the follow through on the thought already. "You can't imagine," he started instead, peevish again, hands up to lay this out delicately, "how annoying it is to have your self-loathing at odds with the voice of morality and reason or whatever. If I was on my own asking myself 'What could Cap do?', I could just tell myself that you wouldn't have fucked it up this bad in the first place and keep hating myself."

It is maybe a little indicative of their relationship that if Tony was alone, he'd be asking himself what Steve would do. Steve can't really imagine his Tony doing that. So he has a point - the Tonies are different. The Steves are different.

But, Steve also has a hard time believing that they are at their core. Tony's so uniquely Tony that there's a vast array of differences in between the two of them, but the one thing that Steve has seen is constant is his heart. It's how he cares for others more than himself, despite the bravado he puts forth.

"No, I can't imagine that, but I also can't imagine hating you. Be annoyed at, yeah. Mad at, sometimes. But next time you wanna think about how badly you messed up, know that what I'd do is help you out of your rut, if you let me in. To rebuild what you think you've lost. I know I can't ask you to like you, but can I maybe ask you to stop being so hard on yourself?"

Of course Steve would offer a hand up, he was endlessly patient like that, and he simply didn't have the perspective for just how deep Tony had dug this rut to know there wasn't much he could actually do. Tony sucked his teeth, head tipping away, because being hard on himself seemed like the reasonable response to his shrapnel. Trying to at least meet him half way, Tony said, "I have to finally do something that I'm proud of," with his hands turned out and a glance up and around at this project that he had been working on. He was trying, just had yet to manage any upward trajectory, instead always ending a brilliant plan with someone hurt, or fighting, or Jon's long-suffering sighs. "That's what this is supposed to be. Somewhere that's safe, that can bring the team together, that's something good for this place, and for you."

"Then do the work," Steve says. "'Cause you won't be satisfied without it." He doesn't say that in a couple months, Tony won't be satisfied with it, either. He'll go back to the drawing board, he'll take on too much, he'll keep trying to improve it.

"Is that what you want? To put away the armor until you feel worthy of it again?" He doesn't know what to say about that. It's not Mjölnir - but him trying to tell Tony that he already is, isn't working. He'll just have to keep chipping away at it.

Unfortunately, Tony already wasn't satisfied, frowning at his lap with the tense awareness that they were even having this conversation because Steve wasn't convinced by Tony's trust in Jon. Now he wasn't so sure himself, despite obsessing over every possible future and never seeing how a house could end in the kind of heartache all of his other brilliant ideas had. If Steve could see it, Tony must have missed something again.

He had to give a tight shake of his head, because waiting to be worthy wasn't really what he wanted--he'd never really felt worthy, even at his best, and what he wanted definitely couldn't be trusted. "These kids already aren't safe around me. Jon already doesn't want to talk to me. Nobody believes that we're all going to get home. I don't think my freedom to strap a bomb to my chest and fly to the edge of space is all that important," he tried, then took a breath to admit, "So, maybe, I guess, if I can solve those problems, I can fly again."

"What do you mean the kids aren't safe around you -- and what do you mean Jon doesn't want to talk to you?" He sounds concerned at all this, hands on Tony's shoulders, trying to get a good look at his face because he's worse at lying when he's being really looked at.

"Are you two having a fight?" he asks. Because he certainly knows Tony gets all sulky whenever the two of them are fighting.

Tony definitely didn't want to meet that concerned look, keeping his head canted and focus skittering over Steve's shoulder as he grimaced, feeling every lie fail before they could make it past his teeth. Without that defence, though, he didn't really have an answer, that was the problem. "I don't know," he had to say, the fingers that tapped anxiously at his heart curling in to knock then try to pull, like he could draw out whatever this fundamental flaw in there was for both of them to examine. "I always think I'm trying to help," he said, "but it's--everyone can see through that, especially Jon, that's his thing, he sees you, what you really are, and he can't be the one trying to fix me anymore. So--Donnie's in trouble, and I think I'm helping him, but everyone else is sure I'm hurting him. Cal is in trouble, and I'm just trying to get him to a doctor, but everyone else knows that I shouldn't touch him. I think I'm protecting this home, and I have to be beaten into submission before I do anything more awful. I don't know what's wrong with me."

"Tony," he says, gently. "There's nothing wrong with you. It's not Jon's job to fix you, first of all, and you're not - Look. If he sees you, if he really sees you like you say, and you're as messed up and unsalvageable as you say, then would he still be with you? You just need to... talk to him. Tell him how you feel. He loves you, Tony."

"But okay. Donnie's in trouble. Let's talk about that. What's he doing? What are you doing?" he asks. He knows Tony sees himself in Donnie, of course, and that's why he wants to help. But the two of them being in over their heads isn't the same thing as hurting him. And sometimes Steve thinks that Tony doesn't know how to tell the difference.

They did agree that it wasn't Jon's job, it wasn't anyone's job, and Tony had to nod along a little impatiently up until Steve missed the part where that was why Jon hardly came out of his office, then Tony had to purse his lips in frustration. Without a tangible solution, some actual progress, a real apology that Jon could believe, they were just going to keep having the same conversation.

"No, not--he's fine, he's out there, he's with his brother," he did have to correct, because he didn't mean any of the kids were presently under threat. He had taken care of that, established his distance, and right now he was just trying to establish a pattern. He had gone over the incident so many times in his head that it should have been so hard to explain, but the words still caught in his throat, and he had to try to shape it between both hands before he could recount, "On the Agrii ship, he got stuck in one of those pods in the isolated area, he was just trying to figure out how they worked, you know, he's curious, he knew someone was going to have to deal with them. Leonardo called me, said Donnie needed help, I went right away, maybe I shouldn't have, maybe that's where I went wrong, I should have thought about it more. But, so, I tried to get him out, I thought that was what I was doing, I was opening the pod, just take the lid off of it. Get him out. Except, to do that, I had to cut the power, so he's stuck in there, no life support, suffocating, while I'm fucking around, and the whole time, I could have just pressed a button. If Leonardo and Wesker hadn't been there to stop me, I could have killed him. And it's like--they knew the whole time. They watched me, I told them what I was doing, and they gave me every opportunity to figure it out before they had to physically drag me off of him. It was so obvious, that they couldn't even believe that I had gotten that far."

"Hold on," Steve says, confused. "They both knew how to get him out and they didn't tell you? Did Donnie know about this?" He has a hard time believing that they'd let Donnie believe he was going to die in there.

But at the same time, it was cruel of them to have had the answer and let Tony believe he was going to let Donnie die, too, so, there must be something that Steve's missing about this whole story.

Peel

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