Tony never smiles pt 1
Mar. 2nd, 2018 04:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyshadowdrakevia http://ift.tt/2GVSO1E
arukou-arukou:
You know how you tell your brain you have like four WIPs you should be working on, and then your brain insists you do the thing anyway? Yeah. That. The timeline for this is super weird, because I’m using certain elements from AOU and Winter Soldier, but only as I need them. So it’s a mishmash of “I’ll have this and that, but none of that bullshit, thank you.” This was inspired mainly by that gif set of RDJ/Tony that’s been going around showcasing moments in which he is “best looking,” but in only one of the gifs does he really smile, and I thought that was terribly sad, that we find Tony to be looking his finest when he’s most wounded/determined/masked.
It popped into his head one February morning over eggs: “I can’t remember the last time I saw Tony smile.” At first, he couldn’t understand why the thought was there. Tony smiled all the time–at press junkets, at galas, at villains he was taunting, and team-dinner conversation. But the more Steve thought about it, the more he realized that somewhere along the line he’d realized those smiles weren’t quite right. When Tony smiled, his whole face lit up. His eyes crinkled like tissue paper at the corners, his teeth flashed, the smile lines around his mouth and nose deepened until the very shape of his face was happiness embodied. But that wasn’t the smile Tony gave to the public. That was something different, something hitching and lopsided, something with a hint of daring in his eyes. Go on, he seemed to be saying. Hit me with your best shot.
It was the same damn smile he’d given Steve on the helicarrier once so long ago, a smirk which slipped on his as easily as the latest iteration of the armor. How had Steve not seen it then?
The next logical step, scrambled eggs halfway to his mouth, was to ask himself when he last saw Tony give a true smile. New Years? He’d just looked tired then, accepting a kiss from Thor magnanimously, and laughing along with the rest of them. But his laughter had been weak, hollow. He wasn’t really with them. He’d been even more dour at Christmas, though Steve had chalked that up to it being so near the anniversary of his parents’ death. Maybe the Halloween kids event they’d done? That might’ve been the last time.
“Hey, Nat?”
“Yeah?” She was bowed over her coffee, eyes bloodshot. He didn’t ask why she looked rough, and she didn’t ask him why his knuckles were still bloody from another 3AM boxing session with the reinforced bag.
“When’s the last time you saw Tony smile?”
“Define smile.”
“You know. Happy. When’s the last time you saw him happy?”
She was watching him now, her eyes narrowed and suspicious, even through the haze of exhaustion. For a moment, she considered, head tilted to the side, and then she said, “April. Just before Ultron.”
Earlier than Steve had thought, though once she said it, he didn’t know how it hadn’t occurred to him. Of course it traced back to Ultron.
“Do you think…that’s not good, right? That he’s never happy around us. Maybe we should, I don’t know, do something.”
“Correlation is not causation, Cap. We might not have anything to do with it.”
“But what if we do?”
“Why does it matter to you?” He couldn’t quite read what she meant by that. Her tone was completely flat, her face closed off. Nat and Tony’s relationship was a mystery to him. He knew what the SHIELD files said. That she’d spied on him. That she’d felt he wasn’t right for the Avengers. But sometimes he saw them shoulder-to-shoulder over battle plans or sharing mugs of coffee in silent camaraderie and he felt like maybe there was more he didn’t know. So he considered his answer before he gave it to her.
“I don’t know,” he admitted finally. “I guess, I think… Is it wrong to want happiness for him? He’s a good man, and he takes care of all of us. I don’t know what we’d do without his help. And I know he doesn’t expect anything in return, but I still feel like if it’s in our power to help him, we ought to.” And I hurt him. We hurt him. We didn’t trust him. I didn’t trust him.
Nat assessed him for a few more seconds before nodding and sitting up straighter. “Okay. You’re right. So what are you going to do about it?”
“Us. What are we going to do about it?”
“Don’t go dragging me into your harebrained scheme, Rogers,” she mumbled, but there was no real heat behind it, and after a moment, she continued. “Let’s start with getting him out of the workshop. He’s there twenty hours a day, and that’s if he doesn’t end up sleeping on the cot he’s got in there. It’s not healthy to work so much, and I saw that as a self-professed workaholic.”
“He comes to team dinner when we have those. Should we plan one?”
“One’s not going to be enough.”
Steve leaned back and thought about it. It’d been bothering him as a big picture, too–their little living arrangement. They were all of them in the Tower, but they each had personalized floors, and they were all busy people. Steve, Nat, and Clint got called out on the regular for SHIELD business. Tony had his company to run. Thor was in and out on Asgard business at all hours of the day. Bruce was a recluse at the best of times, forever running experiments in his labs. They were supposed to be a team, but more often than not they were ships who passed in the night, having to coordinate months in advance to get time with all of them together. The likelihood of all six of them in the same place at the same time outside of battle was slim to none.
“I should talk to Fury,” Steve said, speaking without meaning to.
“Oh?”
Nat sounded genuinely intrigued and he glanced at her, watching the way emotions didn’t play on her face, the way she kept it all so carefully and closely tucked away. He smirked at her a little and ate another bite of eggs.
“We were supposed to be autonomous. Outside SHIELD’s purview for the most part. But somehow we’ve been sucked back in. First thing to do is fix that. I’m going to put a team dinner on for next Thursday night. And then every Thursday we can manage after that. FRIDAY, can you fix up Tony’s schedule to fix that?”
“I’ll do my best.” She brought up a calendar display for him and started shuffling until Tony had Thursday night Avengers dinner penciled in.
“You really think Fury’s gonna let us go just like that?”
“You say that like I’m giving him a choice.”
Her lips pursed, but he knew her well enough now to know she was hiding a smile. “So dinner. You think that’s enough?”
“That is only step one.”
(Your picture was not posted)
arukou-arukou:
You know how you tell your brain you have like four WIPs you should be working on, and then your brain insists you do the thing anyway? Yeah. That. The timeline for this is super weird, because I’m using certain elements from AOU and Winter Soldier, but only as I need them. So it’s a mishmash of “I’ll have this and that, but none of that bullshit, thank you.” This was inspired mainly by that gif set of RDJ/Tony that’s been going around showcasing moments in which he is “best looking,” but in only one of the gifs does he really smile, and I thought that was terribly sad, that we find Tony to be looking his finest when he’s most wounded/determined/masked.
It popped into his head one February morning over eggs: “I can’t remember the last time I saw Tony smile.” At first, he couldn’t understand why the thought was there. Tony smiled all the time–at press junkets, at galas, at villains he was taunting, and team-dinner conversation. But the more Steve thought about it, the more he realized that somewhere along the line he’d realized those smiles weren’t quite right. When Tony smiled, his whole face lit up. His eyes crinkled like tissue paper at the corners, his teeth flashed, the smile lines around his mouth and nose deepened until the very shape of his face was happiness embodied. But that wasn’t the smile Tony gave to the public. That was something different, something hitching and lopsided, something with a hint of daring in his eyes. Go on, he seemed to be saying. Hit me with your best shot.
It was the same damn smile he’d given Steve on the helicarrier once so long ago, a smirk which slipped on his as easily as the latest iteration of the armor. How had Steve not seen it then?
The next logical step, scrambled eggs halfway to his mouth, was to ask himself when he last saw Tony give a true smile. New Years? He’d just looked tired then, accepting a kiss from Thor magnanimously, and laughing along with the rest of them. But his laughter had been weak, hollow. He wasn’t really with them. He’d been even more dour at Christmas, though Steve had chalked that up to it being so near the anniversary of his parents’ death. Maybe the Halloween kids event they’d done? That might’ve been the last time.
“Hey, Nat?”
“Yeah?” She was bowed over her coffee, eyes bloodshot. He didn’t ask why she looked rough, and she didn’t ask him why his knuckles were still bloody from another 3AM boxing session with the reinforced bag.
“When’s the last time you saw Tony smile?”
“Define smile.”
“You know. Happy. When’s the last time you saw him happy?”
She was watching him now, her eyes narrowed and suspicious, even through the haze of exhaustion. For a moment, she considered, head tilted to the side, and then she said, “April. Just before Ultron.”
Earlier than Steve had thought, though once she said it, he didn’t know how it hadn’t occurred to him. Of course it traced back to Ultron.
“Do you think…that’s not good, right? That he’s never happy around us. Maybe we should, I don’t know, do something.”
“Correlation is not causation, Cap. We might not have anything to do with it.”
“But what if we do?”
“Why does it matter to you?” He couldn’t quite read what she meant by that. Her tone was completely flat, her face closed off. Nat and Tony’s relationship was a mystery to him. He knew what the SHIELD files said. That she’d spied on him. That she’d felt he wasn’t right for the Avengers. But sometimes he saw them shoulder-to-shoulder over battle plans or sharing mugs of coffee in silent camaraderie and he felt like maybe there was more he didn’t know. So he considered his answer before he gave it to her.
“I don’t know,” he admitted finally. “I guess, I think… Is it wrong to want happiness for him? He’s a good man, and he takes care of all of us. I don’t know what we’d do without his help. And I know he doesn’t expect anything in return, but I still feel like if it’s in our power to help him, we ought to.” And I hurt him. We hurt him. We didn’t trust him. I didn’t trust him.
Nat assessed him for a few more seconds before nodding and sitting up straighter. “Okay. You’re right. So what are you going to do about it?”
“Us. What are we going to do about it?”
“Don’t go dragging me into your harebrained scheme, Rogers,” she mumbled, but there was no real heat behind it, and after a moment, she continued. “Let’s start with getting him out of the workshop. He’s there twenty hours a day, and that’s if he doesn’t end up sleeping on the cot he’s got in there. It’s not healthy to work so much, and I saw that as a self-professed workaholic.”
“He comes to team dinner when we have those. Should we plan one?”
“One’s not going to be enough.”
Steve leaned back and thought about it. It’d been bothering him as a big picture, too–their little living arrangement. They were all of them in the Tower, but they each had personalized floors, and they were all busy people. Steve, Nat, and Clint got called out on the regular for SHIELD business. Tony had his company to run. Thor was in and out on Asgard business at all hours of the day. Bruce was a recluse at the best of times, forever running experiments in his labs. They were supposed to be a team, but more often than not they were ships who passed in the night, having to coordinate months in advance to get time with all of them together. The likelihood of all six of them in the same place at the same time outside of battle was slim to none.
“I should talk to Fury,” Steve said, speaking without meaning to.
“Oh?”
Nat sounded genuinely intrigued and he glanced at her, watching the way emotions didn’t play on her face, the way she kept it all so carefully and closely tucked away. He smirked at her a little and ate another bite of eggs.
“We were supposed to be autonomous. Outside SHIELD’s purview for the most part. But somehow we’ve been sucked back in. First thing to do is fix that. I’m going to put a team dinner on for next Thursday night. And then every Thursday we can manage after that. FRIDAY, can you fix up Tony’s schedule to fix that?”
“I’ll do my best.” She brought up a calendar display for him and started shuffling until Tony had Thursday night Avengers dinner penciled in.
“You really think Fury’s gonna let us go just like that?”
“You say that like I’m giving him a choice.”
Her lips pursed, but he knew her well enough now to know she was hiding a smile. “So dinner. You think that’s enough?”
“That is only step one.”
(Your picture was not posted)
