Interference

[in_extremis]

WHO: Tony and open!
WHERE: The university/Avengers Mansion, library, Blue 16. Feel free to encounter him anywhere on this path, it's all at once and forever.
WHAT: Tony has some ideas, and some distractions
WHEN: End of July
WARNINGS: I'll let you know if things get weird.


Hiding so completely from the bake of the sun did not stop the training area from feeling bitterly hot. It had seemed large and airy at first, a perfect use for the erstwhile lecture hall, but by the time Tony was escaping with an idea nagging at the back of his head, his clothes were sticking uncomfortably and water seemed to have been boiled. That sweat only became a chill as he trudged down into the basement, cooling rapidly and making him feel exposed and unkempt in the empty, watching hall, until D.A.T.A. came rolling out of the workshop eagerly. He gave the bot a wry smile, and greeted, "We could have been having a proper workout this whole time, that's on me." Helpfully, D.A.T.A. projected a basketball hoop on the wall, and the ball that Tony mimed a perfect jumpshot for before he was sweeping down to give the little robot a high five on the wiry arm that shot out of the top of it to meet him. By the time Tony had straightened again, the projection had changed to an array of video screens, blurred and poorly coloured against the dusty wall, and fuzzy with static. He had raised his bottle to drink again, only to pause, watching the display, then looking to D.A.T.A. with a questioning lift of his brow. He could see them, too, he didn't need the projection, so he wasn't sure what the bot was trying to show him. It didn't move, though, camera eye trained steadily on the wall to hold the image, drawing Tony's focus back to the video feeds. The cameras had been restored throughout the city, watching over the mostly barren corners where Tony couldn't be at all times. A lobster toddled across the beach, where the waves broke on the shore serenely. A burst of birds came swarming out of the hedge around the museum. A spider crawled across a lens, obscuring the diner. Most of what he ever saw was this empty city and its wildlife. Watching it only fed the furnace of loneliness in his chest.

He produced a cover model smile and crouched down to offer a lift to D.A.T.A. and distract him out of this display as he insisted, "Hey. We've got work do to, come on, you're wasting time, you're supposed to be running some numbers for me." This time, the robot obediently cut the feed to roll into the offered hug against Tony's chest, where he remained while Tony slipped into the workshop and considered the tools, unable to completely ignore the loop of video feeds at the back of his own mind. Was that unusual movement, down by the lake? He juggled D.A.T.A. back and forth in each arm as he shrugged on the first robe he found discarded across a worktop, not feeling any more secure in it anyway, and rattled on to try to talk over the feeling as he did, "Unless it's the same storm that keeps cycling back to us, which, alright, we'll buy that bridge when we get to it, it has to run out of energy eventually, complete discharge. It's just an electrical problem."

An electrical problem should have been Tony's area of expertise. He only had several doctorates to prove it. Everyone else seemed to find the systems and engines in this place so intuitive. He just had to slow down, plan ahead more, think about the next two steps and not just tenth.

By the time the sun was sinking and the heat breaking, he was still thinking about those flickering screens. Impatient, he had traded the robe for a sweatshirt and pulled on some boots, but hadn't gotten far in the twilight before he was regretting the shorts as the insects began to swarm and he could feel them brushing around his legs even as he tried to keep to the less broken and overgrown roads. He told himself he was bound for the power plant, the crystals and the engine that kept the city running, and had headed out behind the library through the garden and the purpling path where less windows seemed to peer down at him from the empty-eyed city. He slowed well before he even reached the treeline, though, despite the bugs bouncing into his calves and threatening to crawl up his thighs, shoulders hunched and hands in his pockets like he could go unseen as he stepped lightly alongside the hidden camera. He watched the strange structure that he had been thinking about all afternoon, with its looping bridge of tubes, draped as they were now in vines and cobwebs to obscure the lake behind them, and held the same image from another angle of that camera feed at the back of his mind, staring so intently he thought he could hear the low whine of a CRT monitor. When it stopped abruptly, he realized he had stopped walking, and a grasshopper went leaping ahead over the tall grass, carrying that whining song with it.

Comments

[in_extremis]

"That's not bad," Tony had to admire, though it took some squinting to try to see Cassie's face in the bare description he had managed to provide, and ultimately he suggested, "Maybe that's what she looks like in your universe." He couldn't quite bring himself to look away, searching in that drawing for a life that felt so far away now that maybe he didn't even recognize it, and said, "You should ask Tommy. He'll talk your ear off, you'll know more about her than you know yourself."

[pursuitofcappiness]

"I will," he says. There's going to be improvements to his drawing of Cassie in the future. "But tell me about some of the others." He's still pretty bent on this whole portraits thing - he's hoping to at least cheer Jan up with it, if Tony's not all that keen.

[in_extremis]

Although bragging about the extraordinary people he knew was one of Tony's favourite indulgences, he held himself carefully then, not sure he wanted to confront the distorted mirror or the distorted memories. He pushed at the crumbs left on the plate, head tilted with a click of his tongue, and claimed, "This was easier when I thought we were talking about our current team. Do you know how many Avengers there are? Sixty-two, if you only count people who have been in the war room. I can't claim to have favourites, that wouldn't be fair. It's you, but we don't talk about that." He gave Steve a wry smile.

[pursuitofcappiness]

Steve was really thinking that Tony's favorite must have been Bruce, or maybe Nat. Okay, well, maybe he was scared of Nat. But of all the Avengers that Tony would pick as his favorite, Steve is still wondering if he's joking about his answer.

It makes him a bit sheepish. "You didn't hate me growing up?" he asks then, maybe a little too earnestly.

[in_extremis]

Without that earnestness, Tony would have been sure he was missing a joke, and got as far as starting to laugh, ready to play along once he understood what the game was. Steve looked so self-conscious, though, even under Tony's inquisitively raised brow, so they both jumped up in surprise, then furrowed in confusion. "What?" he still had to ask through a slanted smile, some of the laugh still in his voice.

[pursuitofcappiness]

"That's-- it's something he said to me, when we first met." Yeah, their Avengers are definitely different all right. Also might explain why they don't all live together. Might explain why Steve spends so much time down here in the lab. It's kind of nice being liked.

[in_extremis]

This still sounded like it had to be some kind of joke to Tony, but he couldn't maintain his smile through his bafflement at the suggestion that he could have been saying anything like that in the chaos and awe of the first time they looked each other in the eye. Maybe it was a bad joke that Steve hadn't understood correctly. "How hard did you hit him?" Tony finally managed a laugh again, with his brow still furrowed in confusion. "When we found you--Cap, and he opened his eyes, and he almost took all of us down, I was sore for days. I didn't hold it against him, though. Still the greatest day of my life."

[pursuitofcappiness]

Steve looks at Tony then like he'd grown a few heads. "I - woke up in Times Square. They played a game that was from 1941 on the radio, sloppy work from SHIELD if you ask me. Thought it was nazis, actually, so I ran out right into midtown and Fury. They set me up with an apartment in Brooklyn, gave me all the Howlie's old records. All of them dead except Peggy, who was all the way in London."

He takes a deep breath and puts the tablet down for a moment. "So I sat outside Stark Tower and I don't know what I was thinking, like maybe Tony would come downstairs and recognize me and wanna talk." He shakes his head. "Got a gym membership and broke about forty punching bags before Fury recruited me for the Avengers. That's when I met everybody. And Tony and me... we've never really seen eye to eye."

He looks over and smiles, weakly, patting Tony on the shoulder. "You two got pretty lucky."

[in_extremis]

That was a dizzying amount of information to try to map onto how Tony had been assuming Steve's first few days in the 21st century had gone. He was continuously learning that lesson the hard way. The touch to the shoulder barely helped to ground him, and after a beat the only way he could illustrate how disjointed this account was to him was to pick a discordant detail: "Nick made the Howling Commandos." The whole history was wrong, if Steve wasn't recognizing him has a surviving member, let alone their leader.

Tony had to rally to finally actually answer the question, now that it was clear how far from a joke it had been. Despite how differently their first meeting was, he still couldn't really understand how he would have come to say something like that to Steve, and couldn't leave him believing that. "I idolized you," he said, emphatic and with a hand up to properly level the word, but then he was looking away with his mouth open, speechless, to try to search for an effective explanation, to justify the other Tony's words. There was nothing comparable to being so completely obsessed with a long dead hero, only for him to actually be alive, and talking to you. "Your face might be my earliest memory. I grew up with posters and action figures and comics; you were who I was always trying to be, and--my best friend." That was sad, he did have to recognize, with a tight press of his lips and apologetic wave. The other options were the servos that Tony made, though, and Jarvis, so it maybe was the least sad perspective. "Makes the competition a little unfair," he pointed out to try to distract from that pathetic admission, flicking a finger back to the issue of his favourite Avenger. Steve had been his favourite before there were Avengers.

[pursuitofcappiness]

He's surprised to learn that Nick was the founder of the Howling Commandos in Tony's world, when he hadn't been born yet for several decades on Steve's. How deeply did their universes diverge, only to have the same set of people living life as if simulating out some sort of experiment?

He lets Tony go on, but as he does, he feels the same as when the other one told him he hated Steve as a child: it feels unearned. But that little Tony was practically friendless also seems like it should be a crime. He can see why the two of them maybe reacted to it differently - being surrounded by imagery of Captain America. The other one growing jealousy into hatred, this one turning aspirations to hero worship.

And even know Steve knows Tony's talking about the other one, the lack of separation of the two Steves makes his heart ache. "Maybe," he answers, and then doesn't know what else to say. Then: "I'm happy we're so close." He means for Tony, with his Steve, but he doesn't make the distinction. "I couldn't ask for a better friend." That, he means for himself. Tony's been nothing but good to him.

[in_extremis]

It wasn't clear to Tony why that made Steve look so forlorn, inspiring what Tony hoped looked like an encouraging smile and felt a little awkward. He felt awkward, like he might have put Steve in a position to try to match his affection somehow, which was never going to be possible. Still, it had him draping his arm back around Steve's shoulders, possessive even in the casual fall of his hand and glance away, and despite insisting in a mutter, "We've got to get you out more. Have you met Gladio?"

With a sniff, he waved his own question away, like it didn't really matter and not just that he didn't want to hear about Steve's other good friends, and explained, "After Cap's plane went down, my dad searched for him, relentlessly. He'd be gone for months, sometimes. It wasn't until after he died, after I made the suit, after I met Jan and we made the Avengers, that Namor found him. I think he might have been looking the whole time, too. He finally did it, and it was the Avengers that brought Cap up out of the water, this block of ice with this pristine man, like he was asleep, he had been waiting. He looked perfect, even when I thought we were--we were all crammed in this submarine, in freezing water, with what should have been a body, and no one was anxious, we were just so in awe. And then his eyes opened, and--yours are darker, his were like a colour I've never seen before, it's like I understood something fundamentally different about the universe."

[pursuitofcappiness]

That sounds - romantic, in a way. A man in ice, waking up. Fished out of the sea by another, finding himself encased. Rescued out of it by an extraordinary team who would become his best friends.

"Can't've been easy for him to wake up," he says. Still cold, surrounded by strangers. But he managed. "Must've been luck that you were there." To give him a home, to show him the future. Not that he begrudged how Fury did things, but it'd been kind of a lonely experience. And then, when the Avengers had gone their separate ways, he had his work with SHIELD. He hadn't really even made a friend until Sam.

[in_extremis]

While Tony started to shake his head, he quickly abandoned it with a shrug and apologetic frown, because his attempt to assure Steve that his friends must have adored him already seemed to be backfiring without admitting that the Captain America he knew had been desperately lonely, too. It had been a long time before he stopped wandering the streets looking for Bucky, despite Tony's enthusiasm then, too. Instead, he demanded, "There it is again, 'luck'--that's nothing, that's bad science. You think it's luck that I always get my man? Calculated. Played the odds." He grinned as he slid away to pluck up his device again, giving it an illustrative shake. "It's not 'luck' that you're here, either. Very intentional. They knew that we would all be better. I'm better."

[pursuitofcappiness]

Steve bites his tongue and doesn't explain that Tony's had a lot of bad luck too, and that wasn't all his doing no matter what he thought of it. Some things in life are up to chance or by design from someone else, and that's all right by Steve.

Instead, he focuses on something else. "Well, I know that things are a lot better when we get to work together," he says. "No matter what universe we're in or from."

[in_extremis]

Oh no, that was still kind of sad, making Tony wilt slightly to set his work back down as his focus dropped to Steve's relentless guilty beard. No wonder he didn't believe Tony would forgive him. How was it that Steve trusted him so much then? Tony's mouth opened to ask, but after a flicker of hesitation rerouted, "I'm way hotter than him, though, right? That's why you like me so much more." Steve knew, kind of, what the strange mirror of him looked like now.

[pursuitofcappiness]

Steve notices that Tony hesitates, and wonders what his original thought was, because he wouldn't have been so shy to ask which one of them was more attractive. But, since it's the question he was asked, he answers it anyway: "I get to spend more time with you. And you're both good-looking, but in different ways." Diplomatic.

[in_extremis]

Annoyingly diplomatic, earning Steve a sidelong look before Tony had to laugh as he accused, "Asshole. It's not fair, listen, that he's got his credit cards and his makeup artists, I'm doing the best with what I've got, I think I'm doing okay. The gym-bot says I've significantly improved my glute density. I told him to say that, but he didn't say 'no'." How long ago was that now? It finally occurred to Tony to glanced down at his clothes, dried sweat under a silk robe that no one was supposed to see. Maybe he should have made it to a shower.

[pursuitofcappiness]

Steve looks at Tony with a sort of disbelief like he can't understand why Tony cares so much about his looks, or at least, how he compares to the other Tony Stark. "Are they more dense? I wouldn't have noticed," he says. "But don't you wanna know who I think is smarter? Or better at cards?"

[in_extremis]

"My god, no appreciation for my craft," Tony sniffed in offence, chin up like he was bravely bearing Steve's disregard. He didn't have to come out and say he never even snuck a glance. More genuinely annoying, he was supposed to be the less shallow person and answer Tony with those more meaningful observations in the first place, and now Tony could only give him a pinched look for challenging him with them instead. Now Tony couldn't just admit as much. "I don't think getting me to show you what the Steve back home looks like told you how quickly he can solve a crossword puzzle," he argued instead. See, Steve started it.

[pursuitofcappiness]

"No, it doesn't," Steve responds. "But we don't have a lot of photographs here, and I like looking at them when I miss someone. I thought maybe you would too." He smiles a little self-deprecatingly. "Not that I thought you'd forget anybody's face. But - it's not the same, is it?"

[in_extremis]

Tony also couldn't admit he was nostalgic, of all things; he was the man of the future, always looking ahead, and he had to give a noncommittal shrug with a click of his tongue, looking back to his work like he suddenly consumed his focus again. He couldn't come out and say he didn't want the pictures, either, because then Steve wouldn't draw them. Carefully, he had to navigate, "Maybe," like he was just brainstorming, half-committed, something to keep his mouth moving while he built, "it could be nice if you made a few of them, proper pieces, to hang upstairs, some context for where we came from, you know, inspire new Avengers."

[pursuitofcappiness]

"Like family portraits? I could do that." He smiles at the thought. He never thought he'd be in a family important enough for that sort of thing, but, he supposes the Avengers kind of are. And, well, they are all great in their own right. They all deserve to be memorialized, if only for each other.

[in_extremis]

With a chuckle and inquisitive squint Steve's way, Tony said, "Exactly." That was what the Avengers had called them in the Mansion, and then the Tower, too, and it felt so much like this Steve was supposed to have had that same experience. Maybe it had been Steve that started calling them that in the first place. "Liven the place up a little," Tony muttered, bowing back over his desk.

[pursuitofcappiness]

"Would be livelier if you moved in," Steve responds. "Jon doesn't want to?" he asks, inquisitively, wondering why they haven't. There's room, after all. But Jon is quite reserved.

[in_extremis]

Tony did his best to cover his guilty reluctance to answer with a toss of his shoulder and click of his tongue, and kept his focus down until he managed to produce, "It's a big change, for him. I should have asked him first, before." After a beat, he could breath a laugh and flash Steve a smirk with a roll of his eyes at the predictable pattern. Maybe this would finally be the lesson that taught him to ask first instead of apologize later.