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Steve’s first meeting with Tony Stark, famed artificer, was arranged by SHIELD and deeply humiliating.
Steve was a squirrel at the time, although over the past week he’d also been a platypus, a dog, and most recently, a spider. If they waited another week he might spend some time as a single-celled organism, so they called in an expert.
Stark insisted on examining him in person.
Steve had managed to make it clear, once he was a dog, that he understood what was said to him and retained his mental capacities. They still insisted on carrying him to the meeting room in a little dog crate, closed and latched, as if they thought he might make a break for it and get stepped on.
Ten minutes later, he kind of wished he had.
“So he was cursed when you recovered him from the ice?”
“From the minute he woke up,” Coulson said. “At the time he was Silenced. There was some confusion when he first woke up—we thought it might be brain trauma preventing him from speaking at first.”
Steve wanted to say something rude. If he tried, it would only come out as squawking.
“And then?” Stark said.
“We removed the Silence. That is well within our capabilities. Except the moment we did, he turned into a platypus.”
Steve saw Stark’s eyebrows shoot up from behind the grates of his cage.
“Had you examined him for additional curses before breaking the Silence?”
“Of course. Standard procedure. We found nothing.”
“And once he was a platypus?”
“It’s easy enough to deal with most animal transformation. You don’t even have to unravel the curse, you can just transform the person into a human again. But every time we tried, he just changed into a different animal.”
“You know I bill by the hour.”
“It’s Captain America, Stark. SHIELD is good for it.”
If Steve were human, he would have been scowling ferociously, but squirrels could only screw up their whiskers. Steve shoved his short front paws through the gate and grabbed at the latch.
The hinge of the crate squeaked when Steve pushed it open. Stark and Coulson looked his way.
Steve squawked at them.
“Quite right, Captain. I should examine you physically before we discuss rates.”
Stark placed a thin black rectangle on the table. Steve had seen them before–everyone seemed to have them–and knew they were little portable phones. Someone presumably would have explained more to him, but everyone at SHIELD had been preoccupied with his transformations.
“Stand there, please,” Stark said. Steve stepped dubiously onto the expensive black glass. He’d seen enough spiderwebbed screens to expect they cracked quite easily.
As soon as his thin brown foot touched the glass, the phone lit up glowing blue, which was one of the few colors he could see as a squirrel. He eased his full weight onto it carefully. It made a few alien noises at him.
“Hm. Let me try something,” Stark said, and gestured sharply with his hand.
The world reeled and lurched and transmogrified, a too-familiar crush of sensation as his body squished and compacted into something new yet again.
When the world settled, Steve was smaller, if only by a little. He looked down and saw four spindly green toes painted in bright red at the end. It was nice to see the color green again, but now all the colors were so infrared bright that he felt like he was watching the world through a migraine.
He croaked. It was a chirpy, hoarse, abrupt sound.
“Sorry. Had to replicate the initial results first,” Stark said, peering closely. “But I should be able to–”
Everything lurched again, but when skin and muscle finished rippling outward, he was in his own, human flesh again, seeing human colors, and he didn’t even care that he was naked on a table that creaked dangerously under his weight.
“--get him human at least,” Stark was saying.
Steve blinked dizzily.
“Looks like the hourly billing won’t be so bad,” Coulson said.
“Not so fast,” Stark said. “He isn’t in the clear yet. How do you feel, Captain?”
Steve looked up to say “grateful to be human again” and to request a jacket or a blanket or, hell, a tea towel, and met Stark’s gaze.
“You have the most beautiful eyes,” he said instead. “I think they’re as brilliant as you are.”
And they were brilliant, a very pretty blue which had been uninteresting when he was a squirrel forty seconds ago. But more than the color, Stark’s eyes had an intensity–an electricity–a look of shocked amusement–
Coulson had a look on his face which suggested he was reconsidering brain damage as a diagnosis.
Steve felt very strange. Where had that come from? “Uh. That was not what I meant to say.”
“I need my–” Stark’s gaze darted down, and then averted. “Would you stand, please?”
Steve opened his mouth to say “sure” and instead said, “Anything for you,” and felt his face scrunching into consternation as he said it. Then he stood, and felt the phone briefly stick to his asscheek before dropping to the table with a thud.
Steve stood there covering himself with his hands as Stark gingerly recovered his phone. He wished he couldn’t see red again so he wouldn’t know exactly how furiously he was blushing. He wished he were a squirrel or a spider or a single-celled organism.
Coulson was kind enough to hand him his suit jacket.
“He’ll need to come stay with me,” Stark said. “This is going to be a monster.”
Coulson squinted between them. “If you attempt to despoil Captain America whilst he is under the effects of an infatuation curse, I will tase you and watch Supernanny while you drool into the carpet.”
“Wow. No,” Stark said. “If you’re that worried about the Captain’s virtue you can send a chaperone. I won’t even charge rent and board.”
“Captain, are you comfortable with this?”
Steve stared at the floor. “I would really like some clothing. And to not be cursed anymore. I don’t care where I stay.”
As long as he wasn’t looking at Stark, he could keep his head. There was an almost-visible aura in the corner of his eyes where Stark was, and Steve knew if he looked directly at it he’d start saying and thinking ridiculous things again.
Coulson sighed. “Of course. I’m sorry, Captain. I’ll have someone bring a change of clothes.”
Steve’s stomach growled loudly.
“And a cheeseburger, seriously,” Stark said. “I bet SHIELD’s been feeding you literal peanuts for the past few days.”
There’d been a blend of nuts and grains that were nutritionally-appropriate for squirrels. At the time, Steve had been grateful it wasn’t more flies.
“Let’s make it a lunch meeting,” Stark said. “We’ll talk more when you’re clothed, Captain.”
Steve’s earlier supposition held true, though Stark insisted on testing it thoroughly. The love spell didn’t trigger as long as Steve didn’t look directly at Stark. But if he did, even just at his hands or the ridiculous way his hair stuck up after he ruffled it in frustration, Steve would find himself moonstruck.
“What about my shoes?” Stark said. “Does it trigger when you look at my shoes?”
Steve was already looking down, face still burning from telling Stark he had sensual fingers . He raised his gaze just enough to see Stark’s leather oxfords.
“I feel nothing when I look at your shoes.”
Not strictly true. Steve felt like they were probably way too expensive. But then, Steve had only been in Stark Tower for a day, and he got the sense that everything inside it was too expensive for his tastes.
“Alright, let me test a hypothesis right quick.” Steve heard a few tapping noises and the rush of magic activating, and then metallic whirring sounds.
Stark’s feet reappeared in his line of sight, clad in red metal.
“Look directly at me,” Stark ordered. His voice sounded different behind what Steve thought must be some kind of helmet. He looked up.
His mind went bright with shock. Stark was head-to-toe in a gleaming red and gold suit of armor, and every bit of it was the most incredible thing Steve had ever seen. This was what the future should look like.
“Oh wow,” Steve said. “Is that a battle suit? The lines of this are perfect–it looks like art deco.”
“Yes, it’s a battle suit, yes, I made it. Do you actually like it or is the curse making you gush?”
Steve might have blushed if he hadn’t already spent the whole morning doing so. “It’s not the curse. That’s just…really swell.”
“Glad you like it,” Stark said. “Since it seems to prevent you from getting all twitterpated, you’ll be seeing it a lot.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon running tests. Mostly Steve was required to step on things or under them, and stand very still for short periods of time. Stark took a sample of his hair and burned it with a blue-flamed bunsen burner, and then tapped the ashes into a solution, and then scowled at it. At one point, he had Steve slather his face with a slightly tacky green gel and stood there staring at him from behind the armor for five full minutes. In silence.
Steve withstood it all as patiently as he could. A little bit of boredom was still leagues better than living in a fish tank eating dead flies, and Stark was decent company now that they could have a conversation without Steve bursting into romantic sonnet.
After a second day of testing, however, Stark sighed. “Alright, Cap. I cannot for the life of me detect another curse under this one, a trigger clause, any residue from a cursed object, or even a particular spellcaster targeting you.” He tapped at his chin, not seeming to notice that it made little metallic clinks when he did.
“I’m going to set up a room with an unholy amount of sensors and do away with the love spell. If it transfers into something else, which I think we must assume it will, we should get readings on that process that will give us more information.”
Steve nodded, trying to smother the burst of dismay he felt at the idea of another new curse. This one was reasonably manageable, but there were no promises that the next would be.
Stark–Tony, he’d invited Steve to call him, after his raising the faceplate to eat a sandwich resulted in Steve offering to hand-feed it to him–hadn’t been joking about the amount of sensors. Steve stepped into a decent-sized storage room to find it crammed with strange machinery.
Tony arranged him carefully in the center of a large, thick black glass pad. Much like the phone had, it lit up blue when he stepped on it. Then Tony stuck nodes on his chest, temples, and mouth, and wheeled a tall, rack-like machine over. He removed a glass bubble attached to the rack by wires and secured it over Steve’s head. He had Steve hold two smooth carved stones in each hand.
Then, after a few minutes of collecting baselines, he lifted his right hand and twirled it counterclockwise like he was stirring a drink with his finger.
Steve felt the love spell unwinding, like a string of quivering tension was being drawn out of him through a very small opening. It kind of tickled.
There was a slight catch-and-pull sensation as the last of the love spell came loose, and then an all-too-familiar maelstrom of unhappy sensation overtook him. The world shattered and crunched.
God, transforming always made him nauseous. He groaned. It came out startlingly guttural, like the snarl of a crocodile. He opened his eyes.
The room was much smaller now. There was crushed and shattered machinery everywhere, including underneath his taloned feet. He shifted uneasily and heard glass grinding.
At least he could still see color. He looked down at himself and had to tilt his head oddly to accommodate binocular vision while doing so. He was covered in brilliant red, diamond-shaped scales that faded into white at the center of his chest and down his belly.
Well, if nothing else, at least he didn’t seem to be a very big dragon. He’d heard they got to be nearly the size of the mountains they slept under after enough centuries under the belt.
“That was explosive,” Tony said, kicking a big chunk of the slab Steve had been standing on off of his leg. Steve was suddenly very grateful he’d been in the armor, which was as protective as it was pretty.
Steve blinked, and a pair of translucent eyelids slid over his eyes for a second. For some reason, he couldn’t seem to look away from the armor. It was just… so shiny .
His focus must have been intimidating, because Tony suddenly froze in his approach. “Steve?” he asked. “You in there, big guy?”
Steve cleared his throat. It came out a hoarse snarl that made Tony twitch, and Steve tried his best to shrink down to indicate harmlessness.
“Sorry,” he said. It really did sound like a massive crocodile was speaking. “I’m still me. In a manner of speaking.”
He shifted, slowly unfurling his wings. They couldn’t spread fully in this room. He turned his attention back to the armor, which was much more interesting just now.
“You sure?” Tony said. He was still standing uneasily still. “Cause you’re looking at me in some kinda way, big guy.”
Steve realized he was tilting his head back and forth to look at the armor with each eye in turn, much like he had to look at himself earlier. It must look incredibly silly, like a cat tilting its head to examine a toy mouse that had suddenly stopped moving.
Or, he realized suddenly, incredibly intimidating. If you happened to be the size of the mouse.
“Sorry,” he said again, and resisted the urge to clear his throat again. It wouldn’t make the bass of his voice rattle the loose glass in the room any less. “I think it’s the armor. You should probably take it off.”
There was a long pause. “Why?”
Tony sounded suspicious. That was fair, Steve decided, and settled down to try and look less frightening. Metal crunched satisfyingly against the scales of his belly.
“It’s just very pretty,” Steve said, and a forked tongue poked out of his mouth. To his surprise, he realized he could taste the air, the rich scent of different metals intermingled with electricity and a very faint little bit of something that must be Tony. “I think you should leave it with me.”
“Okayyyy,” Tony said. “Admittedly this is the weirdest reason anyone’s wanted to take the armor from me, but it’s still a no.”
Steve really did snarl then.
Tony froze again.
Steve shrank back, ashamed and mortified. He felt his tail scrape against the back corner as he pressed himself into it.
“I am so sorry,” Steve said. “It’s like–it’s kind of like the armor has the same effect now that you did on me before–maybe I should–”
He shifted again, this time bringing his wings forward to cover his face.
He heard a crunch and rattle as Tony moved sidelong. “Is that helping?”
It wasn’t, Steve realized miserably. He could feel where the armor was like it had a link around his throat. His tongue forked out again. “I can smell it,” he realized. “You… maybe you should go. Probably. While I have a grip on myself.”
He heard more odd shuffling, and then, to his surprise, felt the gauntlets of the armor brush gently at the flap of one wing.
“Easy, big guy,” Tony said in a surprisingly tender voice. “I’m not going anywhere, winghead.”
Steve snorted again, this time in laughter. He lowered his wings. The gauntlets moved to the spiny crest on the back of his neck, then, and felt somehow soothingly cool and comfortingly warm at the same time. He made a purring noise that would have been embarrassing if not for the last few days.
“The armor’s a gold-titanium alloy,” Tony said. “I think that’s what’s got you so dragonsick.”
Steve sighed happily, and turned to nudge the armor affectionately with his nose. Tony stumbled a little.
“Sorry,” Steve said again, but couldn’t bring himself to pull away, instead coiling closer around the armor. He dislodged his tail from the corner of the room so he could sweep it around the armor in a protective circle.
“I don’t know what I thought would happen,” Tony said, sounding amused at the big dragon basically cuddling him. Steve couldn’t bring himself to feel embarrassed about it. “I think it’s best if we go ahead and try to change you back to normal, yeah?”
Steve sighed. “Whatever you say,” he said dreamily, and then nudged the armor again with his snout. “Shellhead.” His tongue flicked over the gleaming surface of the helmet.
“Glad we agree,” Tony was laughing now. Steve was too relaxed to notice what he did then, but in a moment there was another horrible crushing sensation, and he landed at the armor’s boots, human.
And naked. And with broken glass digging into his skin.
“Ow,” he said, staring up at Tony from the floor. Something metal scraped his flank as he sat up to cover himself.
The faceplate slid up. “How do you feel, Steve?”
Steve looked around at the crushed room. “Tired.”
Tony grimaced. “Yeah. And, uh, not to pile it on, but I definitely need to carry you out of here.”
Steve let Tony carry him out of the trashed room, too exhausted to even blush.
Tony assured Steve that the mangled equipment would have transmitted some data before being destroyed, although he had to admit it wasn’t the outcome he’d hoped for.
Steve nodded, too tired to do more than apologize once more. Tony insisted on a break, then, and took him to a restaurant where he spoke to the waiter in a language Steve didn’t recognize.
Steve watched the interaction mutely. At one point the waiter repeated something Tony had said with a raised eyebrow, making Tony laugh. The waiter said the same word, then, but in a different tone, like it was a question, and Tony repeated it back exactly.
“What was that language?” Steve asked after the waiter left.
“Vietnamese,” Tony said. “I really only speak enough of it to get in trouble. I’m bad at the tones.”
Steve, whose own grasp of several languages centered on swear words, ways to report the movements of the enemy, and “can my men drink that water or will it give them diarrhea?” wasn’t going to quibble.
The food, when it arrived, was unfamiliar noodles and broth with thin cuts of meat and greens. Steve ate it without really tasting anything. He felt chilled despite the warmth of the soup.
“That was fast,” Tony remarked, and Steve realized he was staring down into a bowl with just a bit of broth left at the bottom. He quickly drank that. “How’d you like pho?”
Steve stared at a bit of green onion that had fallen on the table. He didn’t know how he liked pho. He hadn’t been paying attention. The lingering flavor of broth in his mouth was good. It tasted like a good, solid bone stock, like his Ma used to make, although there were unfamiliar flavors in it. He thought he probably would have liked the pho, if he’d been paying attention when he ate it.
He hadn’t had a meal he'd liked in so long. He’d been at war, and then woken up here literally unable to open his mouth, and then he’d been eating things like already-dead bugs and hastily-defrosted shrimp, still raw on a plate for him to mash up in his bill. The most appetizing thing he’d eaten had probably been a plate of scrambled eggs someone had plated up for him before an intern had been sent to fetch dog kibble.
He didn’t know what to say, and the silence had gone on for too long.
“Are you okay?” Tony asked quietly.
Steve felt a shiver wrack him. “I want to go home.”
“Okay, yeah, we’re going,” Tony waved down the waiter quickly. He must’ve paid, although Steve didn’t see him do anything except tap on his phone for a moment, because then he was ushering Steve outside.
“You didn’t finish,” Steve said, stricken. There’d been so much food left in Tony’s bowl.
“It’s fine,” Tony said dismissively, and then caught a look at Steve’s expression. He stopped. An odd look came over his face, and he pulled Steve out of the flow of foot traffic on the sidewalk.
“We didn’t have to run out,” Steve said. “You could finish or get the rest packed up.”
“Pho doesn’t pack up well. The noodles dissolve. I ate most of the important stuff, the protein and vegetables.” Tony reached out, and then hesitantly squeezed his shoulder. “Besides. You didn’t see your face.”
Oh look, Steve’s ability to blush had come back. He’d thought this unendingly awful week had finally exhausted that ability. “I didn’t mean to ruin dinner,” he said miserably.
“You didn’t. Nothing’s ruined. I like pho a lot, and I can and will go back whenever the fancy strikes me.” Tony paused. “Look, I don’t know how to be delicate about food insecurity because I’m the kind of asshole who’s never once had to think about it. I can’t say that some people don’t have to worry about not having enough, because they do, but certainly not on the scale of the way things were during the Great Depression. You, specifically, can have pho every day for the rest of your life if you want it, because I will happily buy it for you just to prevent any pho-related panic. Pho should only cause happy feelings.”
Tony gently guided him back into the flow of traffic.
“So… people don’t go hungry anymore?”
“It’s more like people have different kinds of food problems, these days,” Tony said. He was frowning thoughtfully. “A lot of lower-income families are kind of priced out of healthier food options–they may not have access to a business that sells them. We have junk food, things like corn chips, that are typically cheap and filling but not nutritious. Poverty is the same sort of monster it always has been, and there are definitely families who have to pick between bills and food, but…I think there are more options for help, too.”
Steve thought of being six and delirious, and drinking salted bone broth with his mother’s hand cold under his neck. That winter had been hard, and Steve remembered hearing his mother’s stomach grumble as she nursed him.
“Why have so many things changed, but not that?”
Tony made a face. “It has and it hasn’t,” he said, and then got an odd look on his face. “Has anyone tried to get you up to date at all?”
Steve ducked his head. “I tried to bust out when I first woke up, so that caused a little chaos. They got as far as explaining that I was in the future before they realized I wasn’t keeping my trap shut because I was in shock. Then…everyone was a little preoccupied. And none of the animals I turned into had good enough eyesight to read.”
“Jesus Christ,” Tony said flatly. “And here I just walked you out into midtown.”
“I don’t need to be coddled,” Steve snapped.
“Oh, it’s not that I think you should be coddled, it’s just–if I were in your position, I’d have been threatening lawsuits and throwing my shoes at people.”
Steve didn’t think that was true. But then, it was hard to imagine Tony being as unmoored as Steve was. Tony had had a plan–or at least a reaction–for everything Steve had seen him face. He couldn’t imagine Tony throwing a pointless fit in his situation, but neither could he imagine Tony sitting mutely while SHIELD’s curse-breakers forced him into several different animal forms.
Tony would have found a third option, he thought. Something no one else predicted, maybe not even Tony himself.
The thought made him smile for the first time that century, without even noticing.
Tony dropped him off at his guest room to go look over what readings could be recovered from the earlier disaster.
“I doubt you’re miraculously cured, though,” Tony said grimly. “If the next curse manifests, tell me. You can come get me in my lab, or just let JARVIS know,” he said, referring to the voice that seemed to run most of the building.
JARVIS, Tony had said, would be able to help him answer questions about the future. But Steve didn’t know how to ask what he wanted to know just then, which was less about cell phones and food insecurity and more about whether anyone he’d ever known was even still alive.
Instead, he poked around the massive suite. There was an attached bathroom, which was an incredible luxury in itself even without… the rest. He stared at it blankly for a moment. Golden lights shone brightly over a large mounted mirror in a black frame. The floor and the sink counter were both black marble, with a warm wood-paneled cabinet. The lights cast their golden glow over a shower with two showerheads, and a bathtub that was big enough for Steve and easily two other people to stretch out in.
He turned the lights off.
The bedroom had a television in it, which was one thing he was excited about. Just in his short walk with Tony, he’d seen televisions everywhere, up on the walls of businesses and even outside them, playing overwhelming newsreels and football and shows where people talked to each other in living rooms that also always had televisions in them. And all of it was in color .
The television didn’t have any knobs or buttons, but it hadn’t occurred to Steve that this might be a problem until he reached out and touched the black screen and nothing happened. He frowned and pressed again, a little more firmly. Then he tried just tapping. Nothing happened. He looked around for buttons again, even peering to check the backside, and saw nothing except for unhelpfully-labeled cords.
The beginnings of dismay started to circle him as he stared at the black screen, waiting for something to helpfully jump out at him as having a function.
Nothing.
He sighed and dropped onto the bed, scrubbing his face. Couldn’t one thing be easy? Just one?
Apparently not–Steve yelped as the bed dropped out from underneath him, dropping him sharply onto his ass. He landed ungracefully on a hard surface that was… definitely not the plush carpet in his guest room. He looked around and found himself at Tony’s feet. Again. He almost reached to cover himself reflexively, but this time, at least, he was clothed.
They blinked at each other.
“How did you…?” Tony looked from Steve to his workshop door in blank confusion.
Steve groaned, dropping gracelessly back onto the floor without caring that his head hit the concrete a little too sharply.
“Steve?” Tony still looked perplexed. Steve must have surprised him out of a deep study, for him to be taking this long to put it together.
“I teleported,” he said.
Tony looked back at the workshop door again, as if it would suddenly announce that it had let Steve in after all. Then back at Steve. “You…teleported.”
“Yes.”
“On purpose?”
“I can’t teleport, Tony. It’s the curse.”
“Teleporting isn’t a curse,” Tony said slowly.
“I’m going back to bed,” Steve said flatly, sitting up. “Maybe you should too.”
“Wait,” Tony stopped him. He had a very strange look on his face. “Steve, do you have magic?”
Steve sighed and schooled the frustration from his features. “Yeah. On my Ma’s side. I’ve never been trained on it, so it’s not good for much other than making lights and the occasional mending spell.”
Tony stared at him. “Steve, it’s your magic.”
Steve blinked back at him. “I’m not following you.”
“It’s your magic. No wonder I couldn’t pin down a source for love or money!” Tony stood suddenly, pulling Steve up. “I thought it was weird that you turned into a fucking dragon. That’s wasn’t a curse, either, but I thought maybe–nevermind, clearly I was wrong–”
“I’m not doing this to myself,” Steve scowled. “I can’t even cast curses.”
“No, sorry,” Tony said, impatient. “You’re not doing it, it’s just your magic. Try and cast those lights, or that mending spell you mentioned.”
Steve cupped his hand, expecting the pale warmth of a globe of magic light in his hand. Nothing happened.
“It’s got to be that shield of yours,” Tony said matter-of-factly. “Infamous for absorbing any magic it comes into contact with–and then you spent seventy years in a catatonic state with that thing pressed up against you–it’s just got all tangled up, Steve.” His face was bright with triumph.
“Tangled,” Steve repeated. “So you can untangle it?”
“Easy as pie. Twenty-four hours in a null room, and if SHIELD doesn’t have one of those in the underbelly of the Tricarrier I’ll eat faerie fire.”
SHIELD did have a null room. Although Steve was concerned about the shield, Director Fury flatly refused to let him take it in there with him, and Tony said it wasn’t necessary anyway.
Twenty-four boring hours later, he was released, curse-free.
After that, SHIELD rushed to get him caught up on the acclimatization program that had apparently been developed specifically for him based on the assembled best practices recommended by combat trauma specialists. It struck Steve as a little stifling to go back to baby steps. The abbreviated historical timeline Steve was provided was too-obviously sanitized even for what had to be a severely summarized work. There had been an entire war in Vietnam, the stated reason for which was “to prevent the spread of communism,” and the timeline said only that the United States “withdrew” from the war.
The personal files were devastating.
It was a lot to expect that anyone would still be alive after seventy years. Steve knew that. Had known that. Had perhaps not known it as well as he might have.
He had a phone now, although it wasn’t like everyone else’s. It was an oblong oval that folded in half, and the small light-up screen embedded in the top half had to be navigated by little arrow buttons instead of by touch screen. But he had Tony’s phone number, scribbled on the inside of a paperback copy of “I, Robot” that Tony had gifted him for his magical quarantine. He painstakingly tapped the numbers into his phone.
“Finally,” Tony said when he picked up. “You know they haven’t told me anything other than that the null room worked? Fuckers. Let’s get lunch, I know a place.”
Lunch was something new again. Tony called it “Tex-Mex” and ordered him brisket tacos, which were so packed with flavor that Steve happily let Tony order him two more servings.
When Steve was done gorging himself, he showed Tony his phone, wondering why it was different from everyone else’s.
Tony’s face dropped. “They gave you a Jitterbug?” he asked incredulously. His face tightened in a way that meant ill for someone, somewhere.
“Is that bad?”
“Someone thinks they’re being very funny,” Tony said, mouth tight. “I’ll get you a phone, Steve. Hell. Walk back to the tower with me, we actually keep a stock ready in IT for corporate use.”
“You don’t have to trouble yourself,” Steve protested.
“It’s not trouble,” Tony said. “Not for me, anyway. Maybe some for SHIELD. But I’m happy to do it. Look, Steve–you don’t have to stay with SHIELD, you know? You’re not enlisted. The tower is always open for you, and at least your bedroom there has windows.”
His bedroom on the Tricarrier had a window, although he understood that was a rare luxury. It was also all the way up in the top left corner of his room, nearly right up against the ceiling. He made a face.
“I have training facilities meant for the armor. You could stay sharp there while you figured out 2012 for yourself and decided what you want to do.”
“I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I weren’t helping,” Steve admitted. The idea of lounging around in luxury, watching baseball on Tony’s televisions, was not much more appealing than reading about foreign wars in his SHIELD bunk.
“Then help me,” Tony said. “Iron Man fights bad guys, pulls cats out of trees, all that jazz. You’ll keep busy. I can design your suit, I’ve got this silk polymer that holds protective spells like a dream.” He grinned suddenly. “I could incorporate the wings on the cowl and keep calling you Winghead.”
“I’d like that,” Steve admitted, taking a sip of cherry coke. He grinned back. “Shellhead.”