rogers_that: (Default)
Steve Rogers ([personal profile] rogers_that) wrote in [community profile] fossilised2018-07-04 03:34 pm

Birthday fun

It all started with a cake. Not enough stories these days did anymore, especially not in the lives of the Avengers. This wasn't just any cake either. It wasn't store-bought, picked up from the grocery with a hope that the teenager doing the lettering spelled a name correctly. It wasn't from a fancy bakery, though the person who had taken it upon himself to do the baking could have afforded something outlandish. No, this cake came from various boxes and cartons, the contents of which were painstakingly mixed together in more or less the way the recipe card was read off.

There may have been some corners cut, the eggs might not have been carefully folded (mostly because how do you fold eggs when they're goopy), the buttercream might be too runny, but the result was still fairly remarkable.

Even more remarkable was how intact it arrived, in a box in the back of an Audi, to all the usual fanfare Tony himself enjoyed when speeding through the security gates that those working at the Compound feverishly rushes to open for him. One scratch on that car would mean less of a Christmas bonus for everyone.

The cake was transported carefully from the back of the car towards one of the living quarters, a building shared by most of the non-retired Avengers. It did not need to be announced, so the man carrying it didn't bother to knock. Not at the front door and not at the recipient's bedroom. There was no need. No one would be awake anyway.

The time on his watch read 11:58 and so the cake was forced to wait a full two minutes until the day rolled over to be dramatically presented.

Tony Stark burst through the door and JARVIS started the Star-Spangled Banner on his cue, red and blue lights flashing. It was all beautifully patriotic, much like the cake itself, decorated to resemble Captain America's shield. "Happy Birthday, Grandpa!"
starkingenuity: (sad - shock hurt devistated tears cry)

[personal profile] starkingenuity 2018-07-19 06:00 pm (UTC)(link)
Tony wasn’t supposed to be here. That was the whole problem. He was supposed to be in Malibu, with Pepper, having arguments about his insomnia or about how really dumb it was to inject himself with nanotechnology that was set to kill anyone that tried to snuggle with him. He should have been doing more to track down the people that caused the blast that hurt Happy. But he wasn’t in Malibu. He was in New York, Upstate New York. He’d been doing plumbing work, go figure, in the quinjet, to the far Northwest of the grounds. Could SHIELD have taken care of it? Sure. But sometimes Tony just liked to be around where Steve was when he was stressed out.

He hadn’t even planned on seeing Steve at all this time, it was just a quick trip out to repair some valves, but knowing he was drinking hot chocolate and sketching (okay, so he usually watched him on security feeds only he had access to when he worked here) while the snow fell outside just made him feel better.

He ought to have known that something was burning, smelled it on the air. The ping on the map inside the HUD when he’d woken up from the blast, enveloped in the Mk IVXII, was not some distant point in middle America. It was the Compound. He’d been scooped up by the armor when he went unconscious from the missile strike, flown into some trees before the power source died, and woke up less than ten minutes later in familiar yet unfamiliar territory.

So excuse him, please, for not really understanding why Steve Rogers was coming to the rescue on his motorcycle. Tony was concussed pretty badly, his eyes were dull, and he was not feeling the cold in his black jeans and tee. “Did I die? Flights of Captain Americas motorcycle me to my rest?”
starkingenuity: (Default)

[personal profile] starkingenuity 2018-07-19 07:48 pm (UTC)(link)

Tony’s eyes narrowed and he dropped the strap he was using to haul his dead suit back towards the burning light beyond the trees so that he could move more easily towards Steve. He didn’t quite touch him when he got there, though his hand did hesitate over his chest like another’s hand way back in Steve’s life, back when no one expected a scrawny recruit could ever be so muscle bound and broad. He wanted to touch Steve. He looked warm. Like a beacon.

That hesitation was enough to get him to rip his eyes from the blond, to trace across his face from eyes to ear so that he could blink at the dead armor.

“Uh. I don’t think it was me.” But of course he did, after a moment, when his brain caught up to him and his memory of that impromptu press conference and his angry words hit him like the cold he still wasn’t quite feeling. Focusing on Steve was easy, but it didn’t help. “Shit.” His breath came out in a burst of icy air and that aborted touch turned into a sudden grab for Steve’s shirt. Wide, brown eyes lifted back towards Steve’s face. Tony rarely looked scared, but anger hadn’t quite melted in yet.

starkingenuity: (Default)

[personal profile] starkingenuity 2018-07-20 08:42 am (UTC)(link)

Tony didn’t hear a thing Steve was saying. His head was too busy working through everything that he had said, everything he had threatened. He’d given out his address, not if the Compound, but the place in Malibu. The Compound was fairly well known, though it took a lot of security clearance to get within a few miles of it thanks to SHIELD’s presence. If you were a person. If you had missiles—

Without really thinking about where his hands were going, and with Steve holding him up anyway, Tony went for Cap’s pockets, fishing around in the front and the back for a phone. His own had been behind him when the garage was targeted and probably laid under the rubble of what he had been working on.

It didn’t matter if he found a phone or not. Pepper would not be answering hers, though Without Tony there, without the implants going to work for him, there had been no way to save her unless she managed to be free of the mansion when it went down into the bay.

If there was anyone on this planet that honestly needed to be stopped before he got everyone killed, it was Tony Stark.

He didn’t answer Steve. He didn’t say anything at all save to shout at a voicemail if he could get it. His face was bruised and the blood on him was only partially his own. He didn’t need to answer Steve. He was hurt but he was ignoring it.

starkingenuity: (sad - shock hurt devistated tears cry)

[personal profile] starkingenuity 2018-07-20 10:05 am (UTC)(link)
Crunching through the snow with guilt eating through your stomach, inappropriate clothing, and a concussion could only have been made better by leaning back against Steve’s chest, two solid arms around him. He couldn’t be too cold when the guy gave off such heat and he almost thought about asking Steve to carry him, the motorcycle and the armor back to the Compound, like they were part of his USO show.

Keeping himself awake by telling jokes, however, wasn’t in the cards. His guilt washed over him and he found himself mumbling about how Happy had gotten hurt and how the Mandarin had taunted him. It was easier to talk to Steve than to most people, or maybe the force of the blast had left Tony more than a little punch drunk, but as he spoke, guilt and sorrow gave way to anger.

Tony was not the best person in the world to piss off. After your weapons kill thousands of people, one or two here and there that wrong you come easily.

“I need to make sure Pepper’s safe... and then I have to find this douche bag.”
starkingenuity: (Default)

[personal profile] starkingenuity 2018-07-21 10:39 am (UTC)(link)

“Yeah I do.” Stubborn. Angry now. Tony wasn’t going to let someone else clean up his mess unless it was DUM-E... And this went well beyond DUM-E’s capabilities with a dustpan and brush.

It was difficult to think this close to Steve. Months spent primarily apart had turned obsession into longing— And, let’s be fair, longing into obsession. This semi-conscious permission he had given himself to curl boldly to Steve wouldn’t last long, especially now that the Compound was back into view.

Still. It was nice. It was what he’d wanted to do for months. Maybe not this way, but he felt like he could just let go.

starkingenuity: (Default)

[personal profile] starkingenuity 2018-07-22 10:42 am (UTC)(link)

Tony took the first opportunity he could to climb off of the bike. His legs were stable, thankfully, and his knees neither locked nor turned to jelly. What Steve said was right. It made sense. But he still wanted to buck against it. He was used to doing almost everything else. This seemed like one of those times too.

He took a look at the buildings, only one still smoldering thanks to a few upgrades he had personally installed and maintained since opening the Compound with Steve and Romanoff a year and a half before. He’d run from the last chance to rebuild, and now destruction had followed him again.

The dizziness didn’t fade, but he crunches in the snow towards the garage he’d been working in, knowing Steve would follow. It was Christmas. No one else had been here. Small blessings, it seemed.

Tony turned towards the blond, the Iron Man suit and motorcycle visible behind him, and he nodded, reaching to put a hand to Steve’s forearm. It wasn’t to steady himself. “Make the call.”

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[personal profile] starkingenuity 2018-07-23 03:35 pm (UTC)(link)

In the time it took for the gang to assemble, all save for Banner and Thor, Tony had managed to get the reactor in the armor repaired enough so that he could use it to go back into battle. He sat in the snow, as it had started to fall again through the roof of the battered garage with a heat lamp and a blanket, fingers long since numb.

If he noticed, it wasn’t immediately obvious. Tony could and did work through exhaustion, lack of food, and sometimes water too, depending on how focused he was. There was enough life and death on the line for him now to forgo everything but the task at hand.

Tony flew ahead of the quinjet, not just because he could, but because he wanted the time alone. Natasha found the Mandarin’s broadcast location and Tony was going to get there first and kill the son of a bitch.

Or that had been the plan. He hadn’t expected the Mandarin to be fraud. Or for the real villain to be ready to clobber him good outside of the suit and drag him off before the Avengers could arrive.

starkingenuity: (hurt - sad undressed)

[personal profile] starkingenuity 2018-07-26 10:53 am (UTC)(link)
Tony had been tied up in bed before. He actually liked it. It was sexy, giving up some power, letting someone beautiful control his body. Maybe that’s what was missing now, the beautiful part. The two thugs he was dealing with were anything but beautiful. Neither were even mildly attractive. And the big guy was going a little too liberal on the electricity to the wire bed frame technique.

It was getting a little borderline painful and it was messing up the implants under his skin. He couldn’t feel them tugging the armor properly at all, like a few had gotten stuck in the off position.

He was enjoying his quips with Tweedles Dee and Dum until someone decidedly beautiful did show up. At least he got all of the preposition. Maya’s work, Extremis, the explosions, Happy— And then Pepper.

At least Steve would finally get his answer for wondering where Tony was. He just had to follow the sporadically flying pieces of Iron Man armor.
starkingenuity: (confused - puppy hurt sad vulnerable)

[personal profile] starkingenuity 2018-07-26 05:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Now was not the time to get a hard-on but Tony was pretty sure he’d never had someone throw themselves through doors demanding his release before. “Great. Now I’m Zelda,” he groaned softly to himself, keeping his eyes on Steve rather than the threat that Aldrich Killian posed. The other two goons didn’t stand a chance by general principal but there was something terribly wrong with Killian.

Something he’d just been discussing with him when Steve broke in. He wasn’t complaining exactly, but Killian had the upper hand here, and not just because he was a creative, weird, evil mastermind.

His nose wrinkled as Steve took out the two men, ignoring Killian’s little added quip about being an appropriate Bowser. “Your friend is being offered a great opportunity. One you yourself had. Why don’t you run along and leave us alone?”

“What? Art classes? Basic training? I’m good!”
starkingenuity: (angry - tears upset yell scream mad)

[personal profile] starkingenuity 2018-07-26 05:29 pm (UTC)(link)
Why did everyone have to be so super powered these days? Why did everyone want a piece of Project Rebirth? Didn’t anyone take a look at what trying to rewrite your genetic code to be like Steve Rogers did to people? Evidently not.

Tony winced as Killian was struck with the shield until he realized that it hadn’t exactly taken his arm off or knock him off of his feet. He’d caught the damned thing, and the edge had sliced off two of his fingers. They hit the ground with a sickening wiggle before the place that they had been attached lit up with coal red fire and birthed forth two new digits.

Tony pulled against the ties keeping him in place, cursing out loud. “What the—” Whatever else he said was immediately drowned out as heat and noise enveloped him. He closed his eyes tightly just as fire uncurled from Killian’s mouth. How did some guy he barely even remembered learn to breathe fire?!
starkingenuity: (reactor - remove shirt)

[personal profile] starkingenuity 2018-07-27 12:44 am (UTC)(link)
“Oh really? Gee, Cap, I never thought of that,” Tony yelled, probably a touch over dramatic. He had been understanbly distracted at being the damsel in distress, enough that he had actually been forgetting to flex his arm muscles to pull the armor towards his position, but wouldn’t anyone be in his position?

Why did Steve have to use his Captain America voice around him? Why did Steve have to exist, and like pizza and jazz music and be so totally, incredibly, wonderfully himself?

And why did Steve never draw him?!

Maybe there were some questions that he really need to lay off of sometimes. It was unseemly.

As Killian revved up for another blast and Steve assessed the situation now that Killian had effectively dropped the shield and filled the room with smoke from the water’s contact with his overly heated skin, the first piece of armor finally appeared, gold titanium alloy shooting right into Killian’s torso as it headed towards Tony.

“Good job, 42!”
starkingenuity: (Default)

[personal profile] starkingenuity 2018-07-27 03:20 pm (UTC)(link)

Being still tied to a bedframe did not make Tony a very successful candidate for backup. Nor did it really help him get the armor on. He probably should have heeded JARVIS’ many, many warnings about flying metal projectiles aimed at his decidedly soft body, and he might even give the AI some sort of programmed satisfaction later when he turned up all bruised again. Tony groaned as the pieces that could attach to him, did, until he managed to get Steve ‘I’ve totally got this whole knight versus the dragon thing down’ Rogers to help him out with the shackles.

The shield almost took his ear off too, but that was mostly Tony’s fault when a shin guard clipped him a little too close. One hand free was all he needed, and as the shield ricocheted back to Steve through the steam, Tony let one gauntlet cover his arm and used that to blast free the other.

It had been awhile since they’d fought, side by side. The fog made it surreal, the light of Tony’s repulsors shimmering against the water droplets and his armor. Pretty as it was, though, it was not practical at all and he ended up blasting a hole through the wall with his reactor to give them all some air.

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