Tony allowed himself a moment to preen, before giving Nick shit.
"You've let him run around blowing things up for a year without giving me a call. What's changed?"
"Nothing you need to worry about, Stark. Can you build us something similar or not?"
That was about as close to admittance as Nick Fury would probably ever come. Tony definitely needed to get into SHIELD's system. Iron Man couldn't get in without getting arrested and damasked, but if they let him inside their headquarters for even ten minutes…he needed to take the consulting job. Not without a little leverage first, though.
"Don't kid yourself, can I was never the question here, Nicky."
"Always with the jokes. Aren't you at all interested in the capture of the person who's been tearing your company apart?"
"Not my company anymore." Tony shrugged, though Nick couldn't see him over the phone. "And I don't know if you heard, but my departure had a little something to do with not making weapons anymore. What if I manage to replicate this Iron Man suit, and the guy you put inside goes loco too? Then you've got two over-powered technovillains on the loose."
It took him maybe an hour, but they eventually managed to bang out a verbal agreement to which Tony graciously "conceded"…under one condition. He then waited a couple hours, banging around in the shop, until it was late enough that he knew his call would wake the other person up.
"Eyyy, Rhodey!"
"God, Tony, it's 2 in the morning, what could you possibly want?"
"What's that in the sky?"
"Tony, I told you not to drunk dial me anymore."
"It's a bird, it's a plane—"
"Are you high right now? That's a new one, at least—"
"It's War Machine!"
"Alright, I'll bite, you maniac, what's a war machine?"
"It's your superhero name!"
"We've been over this, Tones, I'm a soldier, not a superhero, I don't need some stupid nickname—"
"How would you like to take out Iron Man?"
There was a long pause, probably as Rhodey's common sense fought with his curiosity. Then,
"I'm listening."
"SHIELD hired me to steal Iron Man's technology and create a better one. I said no, they pushed, I agreed on the condition that I got to choose who suits up. You're the best man I know, James, and a hell of a pilot. You're the only person I'd trust with this. You in?"
"…you had to call about this at two in the morning?"
"It's not cool and important and life-changing if it doesn't involve a call to action in the dead of the night!"
"You're insane, Tony."
"Is that a yes?"
"Hell yeah that's a yes."
Chapter 5
Steve was bored.
Considering the parameters of his assignment, it was surprising; if intel was to be believed, he was supposed to fight and detain an extraterrestrial by the name of Thor today. He wasn't sure what he thought about that, about extraterrestrials and Norse gods and whatnot, but he had to admit he was excited at the prospect of a good fight.
It'd been far too long. Iron Man was all for giving them the slip, maybe shooting off a repulsor or two before blowing something up and disappearing into the night; he was too busy completing his "mission" and evading capture to give Steve a real fight. He wondered what Iron Man would say if he asked…he shook his head. God, he must really be bored if he was considering asking a supervillain for a spar.
It didn't matter anyway; this Thor would give him a good, hard fight if the reports were right. Steve was anxious for it, which made sitting around in the rain, watching a hammer and waiting for the guy to show up, well, boring.
"For fuck's sake, Steve, sit still," Clint muttered, adjusting his line of sight for the seventh time. Steve fidgety behavior seemed to be rubbing off on him. "You're a soldier, man, buck up."
"It's been six hours," Steve grumbled, "Never had to sit in a foxhole this long."
"Next time they ask if you can wait in my nest, my answer will be an immediate and resounding no."
"Your nest?" Steve glanced around. They were pretty high up.
"Shut up," Clint grouched, but it was more good-natured than anything else. They got along well usually, had even had a number of three-way video game tournament's at Tony's, but they'd been stuck in way too small a space for way too long. "If you're bored, why don't you bug Tony?"
"He's sleeping."
"How on earth could you possibly know that?" Clint shot him a look. "Oh god, don't tell me Stark's make a stalker out of Captain America."
"Of course not." Steve frowned at the implication he would invade Tony's privacy that way. "JARVIS told me."
"What?" Clint abandoned any pretense of watching the hammer to stare at Steve.
"Tony thought he'd be helpful." Steve shifted under the weight of Clint's surprise. "I still don't get most pop culture references, and I don't always have time to sit down and watch the movie or listen to the song or whatever with Tony, so he went ahead and programmed JARVIS into my phone to answer that sort of thing. Then when I started to write a text to Tony earlier, JARVIS popped up to tell me Tony was asleep and if I didn't want to wake him I should try again later."
A long moment passed, during which Clint continued to stare. To be fair, it wasn't like Steve had asked JARVIS to tell him if Tony was sleeping or not. He wasn't that creepy.
"And to verify, you haven't tied him down yet."
"What's thatsupposed to mean?"
"Don't play the innocent Capsicle card, you know what it means."
"Did you just use one of Iron Man's nicknames?"
"Oh come on, villain or not, you know some of them are pretty funny. And don't dodge the subject! Do you know how paranoid Tony is about his technology? He hoards it like a dragon hoards gold, and he installed his decades-ahead-of-the-public sentient robot butler in your phone just cause he thought you'd like it? What more of an 'I'm fucking crazy about you' from Tony Stark do you want?"
"Why does everyone say it like that?" Steve frowned. "You keep saying things like 'he's Tony Stark', as if that's supposed to mean something bad—"
"Look, you didn't grow up with him on the front cover of every magazine, okay? I like the guy, I really do—he's probably the best friend I've got these days. But I know what he was like before, too, and it wasn't always pretty. Tony was the definition of a hot mess. Commitment is new. Commitment without so much as a kiss to test the waters is revo-fucking-lutionary, okay?"
