#so uh. if anyone wants a maria. id feel bad just throwing her away

[eyepatchdate]

uhh any umineko fans im mutuals with interested in a slightly damaged maria figure.

[bewareofchris]

a friend in need

PG-13 | No Pairing Precisely | MCU  | language?  implied violence?  

summary:  rewriting Iron Man 3 to fix the most obvious plot hole, i.e. where the fuck the avengers were.

The phone rang six times before he found it under a pile of newspapers he kept meaning to read (but didn’t).  “We’ve got trouble,” sounded very much like Natasha half-distracted by something else.  The background of her voice was a cluster of voices playing one over the other.  

 “SHEILD trouble?” Steve asked.

 “Turn on the news,” she said.  (Far be it for her to simply explain herself; talking in code and complicating matters seemed to be the only language she employed with any consistency.)  

 Still, Steve turned his TV and was immediately greeted with an instant replay of Tony Goddamn Stark threatening a terrorist. (When he’d asked, yesterday and the day before and the day before that, Natasha and Fury both had assured him they ‘had people on it’.)  “You still got people on this?” he asked.

 “I’m sure they do,” Natasha said.  “I’m not calling as a member of SHIELD.”

 “What are you calling as?”

 Natasha must have shrugged on the other end of the phone, a sort of casual gesture that would have conveyed a lot if only he’d been there to see it.  Through the phone, all he got was a lingering silence that implied nothing.  She worked her way around to saying, “a concerned friend. I thought you’d want to know.”

 There was nothing Steve liked less about Tony fucking Stark than his impulsive-childishness.  There he was, on (inter)national TV giving his home address to a known terrorist.  It didn’t matter (much) how he felt about Tony (as an individual) because Tony was Howard’s son, was a fellow soldier (or at least teammate), was something almost like a friend—and personal differences aside you just didn’t let emotionally impulsive friends murder themselves by promising to kill terrorists.  He didn’t sigh (but he very, very much wanted to), but said, “isn’t Banner on the West Coast?”

 “You want to send Banner,” Natasha said.

 “Well,” he said like he was considering it, “if we’re just being friendly.”

 --

 Bruce caught the news when it was fresh, long before it became a non-stop repeat of the same horrific shit show.  He was sitting on a drab little couch in a hotel room, hand-over-his-mouth, trying to work through how it felt to watch Tony brashly declaring war on the Mandarin.  He hadn’t been in the city (thank God) when the explosion occurred but he was close enough that the gathering fear was starting to grate on his nerves.  

 He didn’t blame them, not at all, because things like explosions and terrorists and death were the thing of nightmares to the average man. But it filled up all the talking space, it suffocated in elevators and coiled itself up into long lines at grocery stores, so every man and every woman was eying the newspapers with an edge of worry, thinking something between oh those poor people and thank God it wasn’t me.  

 It made him itchy.  It made his perfectly human skin start to feel thin and stretched.

 Maybe he’d been working around to thinking he might as well take a drive to Malibu before his phone rang.  There he was, sitting on his drab couch in his mediocre hotel room, staring at Steve Roger’s name on his caller ID, thinking if he just didn’t pick it up he could still walk away.  

 (And what a terribly pervasive idea.  What a nasty little voice in his head, whispering things about how nobody knew he’d ever seen the news.)  But Bruce answered it on the third (almost fourth) ring and said, “I’m guessing you saw the news too.”

 “I’m watching it right now,” Steve said.

 “Are you coming?”  

 Steve sighed like he thought he hadn’t.  “I don’t know how glad he’d be to see me, but I’m making the travel arrangements.  Bruce, you know that I wouldn’t ask you if it was—”

 “I know,” Bruce said.  Steve would never ask him to get involved, not unless it was life or death. Steve wouldn’t call him up like they were friends if it wasn’t important.  (Bruce was just working out, privately, in his head, if that had to do with Steve’s desire to spare him the guilt of unleashing the Hulk, or fear of what the big guy would do.  Not that the motivation mattered when the practical end was the same.) “Someone should be there,” he agreed. “I’m closest.”

 --

 “Sir,” Maria Hill said from the doorway.  She liked to linger in doorways, maintaining the pretense of professional courtesy.  Maybe she’d come to tell him about Zach in IT’s birthday party (it started in five minutes) or how they were over budget (again, since saving the world was a messy, expensive business) or how something else in the R&D lab had exploded and condolences letters would have to be sent again.  Instead she stopped short at the sound of the news report repeating things like:

 ‘Iron Man’ and

 ‘Vigilantism’

 And,

 ‘Invited the Mandarin to his home address…’

 “Are we doing something about this?” Maria asked.

 “Officially?” Fury asked.  He didn’t turn his chair to look at her but turn his head so he could catch how she rolled her eyes.  “What Tony Stark says or does in his free time is his own business.  Last I checked, he was only a consultant.”

 Maria put her hand on her hip, “unofficially?”

 “Unofficially,” Fury repeated, “I feel kind of sorry for the bastard.”

 “Tony?”

 “The Mandarin.”

 --

 Steve was half through throwing some things into a bag, (there just was no telling what one might need to fly across country to comfort or protect a sort of teammate from a terrorist of unknown means.  He had a toothbrush and a clean shirt, while he tried to work out if he could get his shield past airport security these days), when the knock on the door interrupted him.  He zipped the bag and threw it over his shoulder, grabbed the shield with one hand and went to answer the door.

 It was not surprising to find Clint there, looking casual in a leather jacket as he folded his sunglasses up in one fist.  He was-and-wasn’t exactly smiling when he said, “I heard you need a ride to Malibu.”

 “You heard that?” Steve repeated.

 “We’ve got the same friends, Cap.  Come on.  Nat’s going to meet us.”  He waited politely for Steve to close and lock his door and then glanced at his outfit (exactly the same way that Fury always did, like he wanted to say something but decided against it).  

 “What?” Steve asked.

 “Nothing,” Clint assured him.  “We should go,” and once they started walking, “you called Bruce?”

 “Yes.  He’s already on his way.”

 --

 Retrospectively, threatening a terrorist with his home address probably hadn’t been his brightest move.  While Tony had spent far, far, far too much time designing new suits to protect (Pepper) he hadn’t exactly put any sort of thought into beefing up home security.  His house, while a marvel of modern engineering, was remarkably vulnerable. He’d spent the four hours between 2 and 6 AM going over exactly how easy it was to destroy his house with JARVIS, mapping out every conceivable method of attack and discovering that barring a mime showing up with maracas, there was simply no serious attack that his house could withstand.

 At 6:10, just before his body felt like it was going to fold in on itself from exhaustion, JARVIS interrupted his desperate attempt not to panic, to inform him that Bruce was on his doorstep asking to be let in.

 It was 6:15 when he finally dragged himself up the stairs and to the door to open it, and there they were, Tony staring at Bruce rubbing one hand over his other fist, the pair of them looking (very intelligent) uncertain about how they’d come to be here.  “Did I call you?” Tony asked.  (Because for one very unsettling moment, he couldn’t be sure what he had or had not done, exactly.)  

 “Uh, no,” Bruce assured him.  “Steve called me.”

 “Steve Rogers?”

 “Yeah, yeah that Steve.”  Bruce looked around, caught sight of the giant bunny, and pointed a finger at it with an implied question that Tony simply couldn’t bring himself to answer again.  Rather than point out that it was Christmas (and maybe he’d thought it was romantic) he just shook his head.  Bruce let it go at that, “a terrorist, Tony?”

 “Happy,” he said.

 Bruce sighed.  He shuffled farther into the house, looking painfully uncomfortable to be there.  “You could have called.”

 “Yeah,” Tony agreed.  (To cover the fact that he had not thought he could have; or that he should have.  It was really bad enough that he had thrown Pepper into the center of this disaster, there was no need to drag anyone else into it.)  “Steve Rogers called you?  Told you to hurry over?”

 “Yeah,” Bruce said.  “He’s coming, he didn’t call you?”

 Tony snorted at that.  

 Bruce was just staring at him again.

 “What?”

 “It’s just,” Bruce started, “you threatened a terrorist.  A terrorist that has been taking the credit for suicide bombers.  A terrorist that the United States’ government with all its agencies and resources hasn’t been able to locate or stop.  You threatened him.”

 Tony shrugged.

 “Why are you still here,” Bruce asked. He sounded as exasperated as Pepper, as outdone as a preschool teacher during a full moon, exactly the sort of tone of voice a wife would use on her husband when she found him giving the kids a bath in grape jelly.  “Why aren’t you wearing a suit?”

 Tony had reasons.  Just, standing right in front of Bruce, trying to put together the idea that Steve fucking Rogers, the Great American Dream himself was on his way, made all of Tony’s reasons (panic, despair, fear, anxiety, exhaustion, hurt, anger) seem illogical.  He said, “we were planning to leave today.”

 “Maybe leave now?” Bruce asked. “Is Pepper here?”

 Tony did not want to answer that question.

 “Tony,” Bruce said.  It was a point of pain, sweetly poignant.  

 “I’ll wake her up.”

 --

 Natasha was dressed for battle, Clint had his suit in the jet.  Steve was wearing a jacket, a button down and khaki’s carrying his shield in one hand, feeling underdressed in comparison.  He went to knock on the door while the other two waited in the jet, while he stood on the doorstep he tried to think of exactly what he meant to say to Tony that would convey that he was concerned, in a way that didn’t also convey that Tony was stupid to have put himself and his loved ones in danger by behaving so immaturely.  

 It was Pepper that answered the door, looking hassled but lovely as always.

 “Ma’am,” he said.

 “It’ll only be for a few days,” Tony said from behind her, as a follow up to an argument that must have been going on for a while.  He was carrying her bag while she shook her head.

 “It wouldn’t have to have been for a few days if you hadn’t—Tony,” she interrupted herself, “give me my bag.  Is this my ride?  I assume this is my ride.  Do you know where I’m going?”

 “Not exactly,” Tony admitted, “I just want you to be safe.” He was still defending himself all the way to the jet.  

 Steve was left standing, somewhat awkwardly, in front of the open door.  He peered inside to see Bruce standing in front of the windows, squinting out at the glistening water.  Manners dictated that he didn’t just assume he was going to be invited in, but he felt a bit like an idiot standing outside on the porch.

 Tony came back after a pause.  “I love the new uniform, Cap,” he said.  He shoved his door open and motioned Steve in after him.  “It’s less difficult to look at.”  He mumbled more nonsense as he crossed the room to pick up a decanter of liquor, pulled the stopper out, sniffed it, took a brief second to consider a glass and decided to drink it straight from the container instead.  He sat at the piano, folded forward with his elbows on his knees and his head hanging down. “Why are you here?” he asked.  One of his hands was pushed through his hair, scratching at his scalp.  The question seemed to be mostly directed at the floor.

 Steve cycled through a half-dozen options of obligation and duty and protecting your team and settled on, “we’re friends, Tony.  We’re here to help.”