steadfast_tin_soldiers

Steve is a little more mellow at this point, and while he's disappointed to have Tony move away and get up, he's not hurt or upset by it. He lets him go with only a regretful sigh, and takes the opportunity to stretch both arms over his head with a soft grunt. "Better rehydrate, then," he says. "With actual water. Scotch doesn't count."

Tony's not wrong; it's a good time to get moving, and Steve feels like enough of his psyche has been restored to get going at it. He can't see his friend's face well, with him standing between him and the city lights, and he has to assume Tony's still on the edge of physical exhaustion, but if sleep doesn't come easy to him--and he can't imagine why it would--there's satisfaction to be found in motion and routine. He wants to comfort Tony, reassure, care for him--but it doesn't seem to be the time for it, and too much affection too soon might just come across as weird and desperate.

Times like this, he falls back on banter. "Thanks a lot," he smirks and looks himself over as if trying to see the smell Tony's talking about. "You know, I showered less than ten hours ago. You're bound to be way smellier."

But there is no way he's going to turn down a shower with company. Tony has his number there, and he stands and circles around the bed to come closer to him, touching his hip lightly. "But I didn't get to paint your nails, so you may as well let me condition your hair."

“If it would make you happy to condition my hair and open yourself up for ridicule, then let’s do it.” Tony finds Steve an enigma. He’s subtly fascinated by him, curious at where they might be headed with the next few hours, and confused all at the same time. Tony finds fuel in confusion, a genuine need to poke and prod until he gets his answers, and Steve is good subject matter for that.

Things have changed, of course, in their relationship. No matter what people say, sex always changes people. Tony thinks about that as he heads, naked, towards the bathroom and laments that FRIDAY isn’t set up to regulate his shower for him. He doesn’t mind menial labor but he doesn’t like it when he knows things can be better.

Those scars along his back are more visible in the bright bathroom light. Tony is softer now than he had been when they first met, but he is still incredibly pleasing to the eye. He stays well groomed and there’s nary a hair out of place. His heritage hasn’t given him Mediterranean overgrowth.

And he’s been known to get laser treatments.

As Steve pads onto cold tile in bare feet, audible despite the Captain’s light step, Tony glances over his shoulder and lets his eyes linger.

“Can we rewind back to something you said earlier? Why me? I’m not your type.” Except, Tony kind of is. He cracks wise and has dark features. Plus, Tony tends to be everyone’s type. “Or are you just attracted to people you want to punch?”

"When am I ever not open for ridicule?" Steve says dryly. There are layers of feeling there, but he follows Tony into the bathroom anyway, watching him closely. It's not so much that he's trying to get an eyeful, but there's body language to be read, and then when they get into the light there's a more distinct view of the scars on his back.

For some reason that hits Steve hard, for the second time tonight. He wants to reach out and touch, smooth them away, along with the minor, subtle signs of change (age?) in Tony's body. Fragility, he realizes. That's what's tugging at his attention; the reminded that Tony is as mortal as anyone, and not as durable as Steve, and he could slip through his fingers so easily...

That's a bad train of thought. He shakes himself a little, belatedly, and meets Tony's eyes, brows raising. "Brunettes that give me a hard time aren't my type? Better go further back in time and warn me before I start falling for 'em."

Peggy. Bucky. Sam. Sharon was sort of an outlier, although Steve has found himself deeply drawn to so many different types, he can't definitively say he has a single one. "I'm not sure how to answer that seriously, though. Sometimes there isn't a why, you know? Maybe it just is."

That sounds like BS even to his ears, though, so he worries his lip as he slips past Tony to turn on the water. "You're not like anyone else I've ever known. I've known a lot of people who started out with nothing and claws their way to where they ended up.
Lying in the mud, looking at the stars. You started out on the moon, and here you are slogging alongside the rest of us in the dirt, because...you chose that?"

"There are even easier ways to do penance for all those deaths you blame yourself for. Charity gigs, children's hospitals, get involved with lobbyists--I guess you do some of that, too. And then you run right out and put your life on the line when the need arises."

Does Steve automatically know what to say? Is it part of the serum? Does he have a sixth sense? Tony dismissed that immediately. Of course he doesn’t. Tony has wanted to rain down fire and brimstone on Rogers off and on since the day that they met. The blond is unnerving and endearing and he just says what’s on his mind. Tony might appreciate that quality, but only in himself. So no. Steve doesn’t always know what to say. And he’s not being manipulative either or telling Tony what he wants to hear.

The brunet does step back to let Steve into his space, towards the beautiful glass shower with the rain head and the massagers. His chin immediately lifts and his eyes follow the progress of Steve’s shoulder and face as they lean passed him and back again.

The water steams the bathroom quickly, turning the mirrors and the expensive tile clammy.

“I’m not— You’re wrong about me. I do what I do because I know I’m capable. Haven’t died yet,” he says, putting off the compliment. He knows how to take them, he likes the stroke to his ego, but their not necessary. He doesn’t need someone to tell him what he’s good at. “If I didn’t think I’d always be coming back, I wouldn’t do half of what I do.”

Which isn’t true. Tony nearly killed himself twice hoping to save humanity. And both times involved space.

The rest were just bouts of misplaced ego.

Steve isn't completely incapable of manipulation, but he sure doesn't excel at it. Honesty is his comfort zone. Honesty, contained by silence when there's too great a danger in sharing what's on his mind.

"I'm not, though," he tells him. "Not this time. I started out wrong about you, and it bothered me that I misjudged you so badly. I've been reevaluating ever since. Not that you're an open book or anything. I still can't track your moods. But you, I'm starting to get, I think. You're not just a magazine cover. Not even Scientific American."

He straightens and dips his hand in the shower spray to test it with a sigh of approval. "You're more like a novel by James Joyce. A lot of words to get through. A lot of layers and literary devices."

Turning back to Tony, he smiles wryly. "That's good to hear, because I sometimes think you're more reckless than I am. I need you to keep coming back."

Mouth dry, Tony scoffs. “I’m insulted. I think I should be insulted,” he says, as if playing off that he doesn’t know what Steve means about being a Joyce novel. It’s a little too much attention. He doesn’t like it when people see through him. Pepper’s never even done that, or at least never brought it up. She knows — knew? — all about his suicidal tendencies but somehow managed to live with them. It hadn’t been easy.

But Steve doesn’t just know. He understands. He commiserates. That makes a big enough difference that Tony feels a little awkward. And not just because he’s staring at some perfectly crafted pecs.

Tony grabs the bottles of conditioner from the sink counter and hands them over to the blond. Change of subject.

“Right now, I just hope that you’re up on your conditioning game. This mission calls for it,” he says and climbs under the spray.

"What, you're more of a Hemingway kind of guy?" He teases gently. "I know you don't read Proust. You wouldn't be able to sit still long enough."

Steve can't sit still long enough, either.

But it takes one to know one, Tony. The impulse to risk life (or throw it away) isn't new to Steve. One might even say it's part of his personality, ever since he was 5'4" and asthmatic and desperate to join the military; it's just that with depression on top of it, it's taken an even darker turn of late. He can't be sure, but he thinks Tony has that same streak of madness within him, and maybe it's been there since he was a kid, too. And he knows Tony's hurt, as badly as Steve or worse. Their backgrounds are wildly divergent, their worldviews are a century apart, but their reactions are terribly close parallels.

He's not going to push his point, anyway. Heart to hearts can come after the mission's done, or trickle out even more slowly over the course of the next few years, if they live that long. With any luck, they'll have time together.

"Sir, yes, sir," he says with a smirk, accepting the bottles, and follows Tony into the shower. He doesn't get much of the spray, himself, but standing behind him and watching the water trickle down his skin is plenty rewarding. It would be nice, he thinks, to just kneel down and catch some of those droplets with his tongue...

But they'll never get anywhere if he doesn't control that kind of impulse.

"I'm sure you're not shocked to hear this," he tells him, pouring conditioner into his palm, "but you're awfully easy on the eyes."

Tony isn’t a fiction kind of guy. If he’s going to read anything, it’s fact based. And usually, it’s a teaching tool. His brain absorbs information, almost to the point where it simply can’t hold anymore. He’s a sponge. When it’s too full, it doesn’t just overflow, but he loses some valuable data too. He’d rather that information include last names and his social security number than anything else, however.

Without turning, Tony’s eyes lift as if signaled by the smell of tea tree oil and lavender. “Shampoo first,” he says softly, which is more intoned like a ‘thank you’ than an admonishment of any sort.

Tony doesn’t know how to be genuinely appreciative, even if he feels it. Expressing those feelings takes effort. More sponge-effect.

He follows it up by subtly leaning against Steve’s broad and solid like a tree. He’s watched the HUD replay of their fight many, many times and he knows the amount of force he was pulling with each punch and forward momentum. It still surprises him how sturdy Steve is, given Tony’s own weight. He does the math in his head, solving for breaking points, as if he’s forgotten that Steve and Captain America are the same person.

He feels cozy. Lazy. Heated, but not so much that he can’t pay attention to anything else. The feel of the now softened but still impressive muscle against his skin reminds him of the release he’d been given.

Steve can get a few minutes without all of the snark. You know. As that thanks he can’t say. Besides, what’s one of the most beautiful people in the world doing giving him compliments like that?

Steve will read almost anything. Fiction, philosophy, strategy, history, science, poetry. He knows when he's run up against something beyond his easy comprehension, and he'll skip high-level mathematics and quantum physics, but nearly everything else is fair game. And yet, he does favor fantasy and sci-fi, and classic philosophy. His brain latches onto things he doesn't care to remember. It's good to have backup fiction to pull into place, like its own kind of shield, when the sounds of men screaming on the battlefield get too loud in his ears.

Shampoo first? Steve glances at what he's poured into his hand, huffs amusement at himself, and runs it through his own hair. He'll rinse it out after, and he's quick to switch bottles. Lavender is one of his favorite scents. Roses are nice, but strike him as funereal. Lavender is a summery smell, sweet but not too sweet.

He welcomes the lean into his chest, smoothing back Tony's hair before massaging the shampoo into it. This is actually not something he's done before. Showers with Bucky have involved more splashing water into one another's faces, playful sexual tension rather than succumbing to intimacy. It's nice. It's healing.

"I just wanna be good to you, Tony" he says quietly. He's not even sure where the impulse comes from. It's complex, born of fondness and need and guilt and loss and a host of other emotions and memories both sweet and bitter. "Let me be good to you."

It's not even sexual--although there's a high chance of him getting turned on again by the proximity and heat, but he can control that, to an extent.

The hands in his hair feels so nice. The touch of their bodies together is both soothing and invigorating in a way that is surely part of Steve’s plethora of super powers. Tony will have to look up his dossier when they get to SHIELD tomorrow or the next day to double check. He isn’t a man who is easily swayed. A pretty face might get his eyes to move or his head to turn to see if that pretty face comes with a nice ass too, but this is different. Steve had both a pretty face and a nice ass, but he’s not just a generic person with a good body and a good soul.

Can you be attracted to depression? Can you be attracted to the cracks in the old vase, the signs of weakness and of age and of morality? Tony is pretty sure that’s a shitty thing to admit but he can’t stop himself from feeling that way. Or from wanting to find finger holds in those cracks and climb to the top, to peer inside, to know the truth.

How long as it been like this? He felt shadows of this emotion cross him when he flipped through sketchbooks or played chicken with the speed dial on the flip phone. He could have gone on forever with just that shadow but Steve’s gone and done to him what very few have ever done before. It’s not the sadness. It’s not the loss of a surrogate child and a fiancée that’s caused all of this. It hadn’t been grief sex.

Soap in his hair, Tony turns slightly to catch a glimpse of this foolish idiot’s jawline. ‘Let me be good to you’ translates word for word into ‘let me love you.’ It’s poisonous and irresistible. Tony turns again, this time to put his arms around Steve’s waist.

“So be good to be me.”

Maybe there's a little of that on both their parts. Maybe that's some of what Steve's feeling now, the pull toward the wounded parts of Tony, to the signs of vulnerability, the holes in his armor. He's less interested in seeing and analyzing than soothing and healing, though. Which is like him: he has a deep-seated drive to help and to give.

It's not altruism, though. At least, Steve doesn't feel like it is. Maybe it's an outlet for emotions he's repressed for too long. Maybe 'let me be good to you' is as much a plea for forgiveness as an offer of affection. Tony's interpretation isn't wrong, either, though. Let me love you. I want to love you.

He already does, obviously, with or without permission or common sense. He's just not ready to admit it, and it's probably safer for them both that way, for now.

Something in his eyes flickers when Tony turns, bright blue piercing and hungry as his gaze sweeps his face. Then, lashes half-lowering, he goes back to massaging his scalp, sweeping down to the back of his neck, and leans in. He kisses his temple, nuzzles against his cheek, working his way down to his throat. They're soft kisses, featherlight touches against his skin meant to give pleasure, though not necessarily to arouse.

"You've been on my mind," he murmurs. "I don't know how to explain. But I missed you. I wanted you to be happy. Wanted to tell you I didn't mean to hurt you..."

There are things he can't take back, things he can't apologize for, things he wouldn't do differently if he had them to do over again. That doesn't mean he's not sorry they happened, though. And it doesn't mean he doesn't bitterly regret some of his actions.

"Even before all that I just...really wanted to see you happy," he adds quietly, as if remembering.

That probably explains why he seemed so excited about the idea of Pepper potentially being pregnant when they talked about the Accords that last time. "I guess I should've told you that."

He’s never been thrown so off balance before. Tony’s fingers press more firmly against Steve’s spine, as if he could see the same person making him feel this way for support against feeling this way. Tony’s blown himself up, had someone sacrifice their life for him, been backstabbed by an old family friend, and literally breathed in the dusty remains of a teenager over the last decade or so, all of which might have ruined his stability, but it took Steve God Damned Rogers to say a few words and lightly drop a few kisses along his hairline to completely undo him.

Steve says things youd expect the good guys in Noir movies to come up with, the ones that have the dame before she decides to fall for the gritty, demon-laden leading man. You’ve been on my mind. I just really wanted to see you happy.

How do normal people react to that? Tony’s first instinct is to push Steve away, but he battles that like he’d been battling his body to keep from flinching. No one has time for him to be physically afraid of his only ally, no matter what circuit his fight or flight mentality is currently wired to. This feeling has nothing to do with physical fear, though. Steve Rogers is intense with a big black hole in the center of his chest, threatening to suck everything in even as it provides stability for other bodies to orbit peacefully.

He should not be thinking of the blond in terms of astromical physics but he can’t help himself, caught in a gravity well. “You’re telling me now,” he manages, though he feels so stiff, his body tense and his voice frozen in his throat. He sounds icy. He doesn’t mean to. This is just a bit much for him. “I’ll be happy when we fix this.”

"Yeah," Steve's kisses stop their downward progress as he feels Tony tensing up. He's not sure whether the withdrawal is emotional, physical, both. It's a lot, he realizes. A lot, fast, for both of them. And he's not trying to make a confession of love, either. Just trying to make things as right as they can be, reaching for some kind of assurance between them and letting his own honesty carry him away.

Too far, he thinks, hearing the tone in Tony's voice. It's strangely fascinating, though, how he doesn't physically pull away, doesn't verbally push back. Freezes. It makes Steve feel a little too powerful. He draws in a deep breath and rests his forehead against Tony's shoulder a moment, then straightens up and curls his hand across the other man's brow to keep suds out of his eyes as he rinses his hair.

"Sorry," he murmurs. "I'm...a lot. Too much."

He doesn't bother asking if Tony's okay. Ultimately, neither of them are. He has to hope he'll at least try to push him away if he needs physical space, though. "You, uh, want the conditioner now?"

Edited (missed a word) 2018-07-05 15:33 (UTC)

Steve is a lot. He’s heavier than Tony would have expected, filled with more substance than he had given him credit for. More than that, however, Steve feels too much. The stoic soldier out of time on the battle field and the guy who was always quick to smile over pizza but rarely talk about himself has more emotion in him than Tony thought possible for a human being to have. It’s oppressive, to have that force directed at you.

Tony’s never shied away from a challenge though. While he might have agreed that Steve is a lot, ‘too much’ are words that don’t compute. Nothing is ever too much for him. He can handle everything.

Tony shakes his head, water flinging itself against the shower walls. “I can take you,” he says, hinting at the double entandre. “Already did and I can do it again this time too.”

They’ve lost so much that this feels like a rush patch job. Nothing’s been sanded, nothing’s been left to dry. It’s not solid, but it’s their only game plan to push forward with. They needed this. Tony needs it.

They’re still playing a game of chicken, he realizes, but the stakes are insane and the odds are dismal. It’s his sort of challenge. “Don’t hold things back from me.”

Steve needs this just as badly, emotional intimacy and reassurance and--he knows he's off-kilter, functional but far from at his best, and he should not be doing this now. Should not be reaching for Tony Stark from a place of desperate emotion, even if there's a spark of something real underlying it.

Or should he? Has he been too quiet all this time, too stoic? Sam and Natasha seemed to think so, always trying to get him to open up. Trouble with opening up is you have to let stuff out and let stuff in.

So which is right? Lean on Tony the way he's being invited to, or pull back and try to recover the equilibrium he thought he had before?

'Don't hold things back from me' Tony says, as if he's reading Steve's mind, and the soldier's expression flickers from mild uncertainty to genuine distress. Not holding things back is light years out of his comfort zone. They have to trust each other, though. They have to trust each other now, because there's no one else, and they have to work together, save the world and save one another.

He's going to have to trust Tony with everything, and at last he swallows hard and gives a little nod, acknowledging that. "Promise me the same," he says. Not a question, but a demand.

If there’s nothing else to lose and nothing really to give up, why not? Who is this really hurting? They’re already both torn up and raw, bleeding where no one else can see. The argument of this eventually going to happen, or that they need this for relief is null and void at this point. As there’s a lack of good reasons not to carry on, there’s no reason to fight the carrying on.

Tony can let Steve love him, even if it’s artificial. Maybe he can love Steve too, even if it’s just a facsimile of what he’d had with Pepper. They can be like the Spartans at Thermopile, a set of lovers facing the unknown in hopes to save everything. Good enough for Tony. It’s about time that he reinvent himself.

Steve’s demand is still a little shocking. He blinks up through the water, willing whatever lacks a connection to find it in the blond, sooner rather than later. Now. They’re about to shape history so he can damned well shape himself.

“I can do that,” he says without any need for goading. This is the path to their survival. “It’s going to get messy. Glad we’re in the shower. You want to start with the conditioner? We’ve got time to let it sit.” He doesn’t break eye contact. “I really am going to need you to love me. And tell me that you love me. Often. I need something to fight for and you’re it, Rogers. Something more than the future we’re messing up for ourselves. I’m guessing you’re going to need more than that future too. It’s not conventional, I get that. I think that suits us.”

Steve gives a little nod, slowly at first, then more emphatically, running his fingers carefully through Tony's hair to help get the last of the soap out. He's trembling a little, feeling like he just opened Pandora's Box to see if Hope was still stuck in the back corner somewhere.

They can get through the mission one way or another--and Steve has thoughts about what work could come after that, but whether they can carry on that long seems to be up in the air. He wants to, though. He wants things to stop, wants a break to try and find something inside himself that's not broken, that's normal, that's some kind of recognizable remnant of the youth he was before Rebirth. He doesn't really want his life to end like this, spilled out in hopelessness as the world burn around them.

And he wants to see Tony Stark happy, just for once.

"I do, though," he says, voice harsh and quiet and raw. "I do love you." Before you even asked for it, Tony.

"I'm scared," he adds, almost a whisper. When has Captain America ever admitted to being afraid? Not often, that's for damn sure.

Tony doesn’t care if it’s true. He doesn’t care if Steve does or will really love him, or what capacity they love is about. Friendship? Romance? He just needs to hear it. He can believe everything else on his own, mind supplying everything he needs. His eyes close as Steve finishes rinsing out his hair and leans in for a kiss as if that alone can sooth Steve’s fears. That’s not how this works, but if they’re in a fantasy of their own making, the main characters that will usher in the rest of the world towards a brighter future, then Tony is willing to play the part.

“There’s nothing to be scared of,” he says, which is more parental than he wants to be as he lowers himself back down on his heels. “If we screw something up, we’ll just try again. It’s going to work.”

Tony Stark doesn’t fail. And from what he’s seen from Steve, nothing the blond can actively controls fails either.

“We’ve got a magical hammer and a time machine suit and we have each other and all of that is completely crazy.” For some reason, that makes him grin. “That’s how I know we’ve got this.”

He takes the kiss willingly, curling around Tony and petting the back of his wet hair. It's soft, not ravenous but delicate and still somehow too-full of emotion.

Steve doesn't do well with doubts, doesn't do well with moral ambiguity, doesn't do well when he can't see the high road ahead of him. And he can't, right now. He's lost. Strategically speaking, he can think of six or seven different considerations they ought to be talking about right now: Should they go after more than one stone? How much should they tell their alternates? What about Hydra's presence in SHIELD and the government? Shouldn't the endgame be to kill Thanos, not just make this one tiny change to stymie his plans for the Gauntlet?

But strategy isn't what he's worried about. Saving the universe, or avenging it, isn't what scares him.

"It's not that," he says, and nudges his forehead against Tony's gently. The bridges of their noses almost brush. "That's not what scares me. I don't want to break. I don't want to hurt you any more."

It says something about Steve that the personal, the emotional, feels like a more insurmountable obstacle than a giant purple alien with a handful of magical gems.

His hands are cradling Tony's face now, which mean he can feel the grin appear in the flex and pressure of his jaw and cheeks, and he opens his eyes and tilts his head back enough to get a glance at it. Hope or mania? He can't quite tell, but either way it's kind of a good look for Tony Stark. He gives a little laugh and kisses him again and murmurs, "You're crazy," against his lips. "Do you think you can save me, Tony? I think...you got the best chance of anyone I know."

“If I can save myself, I can save anyone,” Tony outright boasts before Steve kisses him again and they can lose another moment or two locked in this cosmic absurdity. “Even Steve Rogers.” They’ve got to be above their monikers. Captain America and Iron Man exist here already and have been, are, and will be icons into the future. There’s no room for two of each. Tony can’t save Captain America, a badge who needs no saving, even if the world doesn’t know he still exists in the flesh and not simply the mind, but he can save this man.

What better way to test run saving half of the universe?

They’re going to hurt each other from time to time. That’s just life. They might even hurt each other badly. Tony can’t stop it. But he can fill in the cracks he can almost feel in Steve and repaint the fallen soldier to make him almost as good as new. Easy, really, for a guy that transformed a subatomic, cross dimensional particles into a time machine just a short day ago.

Conditioning his hair, Tony decides, is just going to have to wait. He’s given Steve every reassurance he can think of and dwelling in that head space will only undo it all. He hadn’t been lying when he told the blond that he needed him to be the focus of his energy, that he needed to be told he was loved so that he had something to fight for. He’s come to know himself. And without one person to always return to, there’s a good chance that Tony will lose himself too.

Discussion of the plan takes place in boxers to avoid sticking too much to the sheets with cold food and lots of pen-scratched paper between them. Tony has his game face on, plate resting on a bare knee with his fork stuck inside of a meatball he’s utterly forgotten about.

“Yeah, Thanos is still the end game. But we need to reverse the chain reaction where it started. It’s going to be fun, infiltrating SHIELD again. For the first time,” Tony grins. He’s never shied away from word play.

He means it, too. As much as Steve loved Bucky, not to mention Peggy and many others, Tony is the absolute best possibility to stabilize him. Because Tony's a fixer. Because he's as stubbornly determined as Steve. Because they can and have lashed out at one another without pulling their blows, because they each see the darkness and the light in the other.

Because they aren't in perfect synch, and they both need the challenge of butting heads to really keep them interested.

Steve has to rinse out his own hair, and for the sake of lightening the mood, he starts humming 'Umbrella' partway through, just to get a reaction. The end result of the shower is as it should be: both clean, no one injured, most of the hot water allotment for their room used up.

"That's weirdly poetic," Steve tells him, nibbling some kind of apple dumpling from the meal cart's bounty (honestly, Tony, how much did you order??). "Nipping it in the bud. Sort of. There are a lot of buds."

"I was thinking," he says slowly, after another bite. "And tell me if I'm crazy here, but when Loki showed up before, he already had the Mind Stone in the scepter. Do we really want to keep that even from happening? What if we...use the Tesseract to lure him in? Destroy both Stones, and when Thor comes to get him--"

Because he will, no question there, and possibly do some really stupid stuff to get to him. "We might have a chance to give Asgard a heads-up on what's coming."

The only problem with this idea is that Loki has proved extremely difficult to contain. And they'd have to break the Mind Stone fast, or risk having it used against them.

Steve’s idea is a good one, but a risky one too. Tony can’t help but see the danger in that scenario, of having to battle on two fronts. It will require playing everything cool and not interfering in anything until Loki makes his play in Germany. Tony finds himself lightly stroking his beard with his thumb from the edge of his jaw to his chin. “We need to be on the hellicarrier before everyone shows up,” he determines, just nodding his head very slowly for a moment as he finds the timeline they’ve already ferreted out of their memories in the pile of papers between them.

People are going to get hurt. SHIELD agents will die and Barton’s going to have to be brainwashed again. At least they know how to knock their controlled agents back to themselves this time around before anything happens.

“Barton ever tell you where their launch site was after Loki was brought on board? If we can get to them before they mount the attack that leads to Loki killing Coulson and unleashing the Hulk, we have a leg up.” Loki will still be in captivity. No one needs to die onboard the carrier. Both stones will be ripe for destruction.

Win-win-win.

Steve's inclination in a fight is to play for high stakes. It's served him well in a number of ways, not the least of which is how it leads his opponents to think he's more arrogant than he is. It's bound to catch up with him sooner or later (one might say it already did, with Thanos, but Steve is inclined to believe they were simply hopelessly outgunned in that instance), but if it doesn't catch up with him today, they'll be all right.

He's listening to Tony's reaction, though, just uncertain of himself enough to want the feedback, both spoken and unspoken. It says a lot that Tony didn't even start by giving him a you've-lost-your-mind glare. Of course, Stark plays high stakes, too.

"Might not be able to use our appearance to get there," he says, nodding back.

"Barton didn't tell me about it. He didn't want to talk, and I don't blame him. But he was debriefed, and Romanoff and I had a personal interest. We helped with cleanup. Where's the map, I can show you--"

He rifles through papers, jaw setting slightly as he lets the idea really sink in. It involves allowing a lot of deaths they could prevent. He doesn't much like that aspect, but it was his own suggestion. Playing God, picking and choosing who lives and who doesn't, makes it worse. And yet: "We better try and make sure Coulson lives. They're gonna need him."

Because after this, SHIELD is going to have to ferret Hydra out of itself, preferably without massive casualties. Steve can't help with that this time, although he has no doubt his other self will want to.

Edited (edit for clarity) 2018-07-09 12:50 (UTC)

This whole mission involves playing God, otherwise they would have just focused on rebuilding the world that they were left after their defeat and moving on. Instead, here they are, moving back. It’s a fine look for a guy whose whole business model is playing God. Tony’s done some crazy things, created some crazy things, and caused a lot of crazy things. He can’t really comment on this. Besides, all they’re doing is saving people that had already died.. Even one person left alive that was supposed to have died will change the course of the future. It could be for the better. It could be so much worse.

All Tony does know is that nothing will be worse than if they let Thanos get his hands on all of the stones. They have a fighting chance if they destroy one and double the odds again if they destroy two.

Tony has a sudden, romantic idea of becoming space pirates with Steve, hunting down the other gems, and visiting strange new worlds when this is over. And why can’t they do that? Tony already had all of the data gathered from the Chitauri and Thanos’ invasion stored in FRIDAY’s databanks. He can whip up a space faring craft in a—

Huh. So they’re going to have to get away from the snap analogy from now on.

Looking over Steve’s map, at the pinpointed location where the trap Loki set is to be sprung from, Tony gives a little shrug. “So this is easy. We monitor the hellicarrier’s channels and the moment the other you and I catch Loki, we destroy this base. Just the equipment. There’s no need to get fancy just yet.”

See, Steve's romantic idea is more along the lines of finding somewhere quiet in the country where they can build or renovate a big studio space that's half his art and half Tony's engineering. Except realistically it would end up being one-tenth his art and nine-tenth's Tony's space, because watercolors don't require as much workspace and he just has this feeling Tony's inclined to spreading out. That's kind of a long way from Space Piracy, but maybe he could be talked into it. They won't really belong on the planet, anyway.

So much for the off-Broadway musical, though.

"We're probably going to have to face Barton," he observes. "But apparently if we hit him really hard in the head he'll snap out of it."

They'll just need the element of surprise there, because if he gets one of them in his sights...well, he never misses.

"So, we can hit the Cube there, before they use it to open the portal to the Chitauri army." That's good. That'll prevent a lot of damage. "And then what? Get up to the helicarrier and destroy the scepter from there?"

Haha, there's the part that'll get interesting, because it'll be right under Tony and Banner's noses, with various other Avengers and SHIELD personnel in close proximity. Some part of Steve--the part of him that enjoys trolling, perhaps--kind of wants to do that just to see the reactions. His lips press together in a thin line, but it's not sternness or disapproval. He's trying not to laugh.

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((I loled at the snap analogy.))