Freezer Burn bit

[domarzione]

I haven’t been around these parts for a few months because of ongoing Major Life Changes (all good, I assure, but all major) and I don’t have the brain to work on the WIP I’ve been WIP-ping on for the pandemic. But I had a moment and I’d just reread Freezer Burn (you’re allowed to reread your own stuff, right?) and there’d been that Ask about Tony and so…

I’m not sure where it’s going or if. Major Life Changes are going to be ongoing for a while. But…

___

Tony draws up a list for the therapist Pepper makes him go see after the alien guts are finally washed out of the carpet and the Loki-shaped hole in the floor is filled in. He's not oblivious to his own current lack of cope; he's been in and out of therapy for thirty-five years and he can understand the principles even if he thinks it's a quack racket. He's not over Afghanistan. He's really not over nearly dying alone in an alien galaxy. And Fury's version of the Traveling Wilburys is messing with his ego in ways he probably should have anticipated but are nonetheless being exacerbated by the first two things. It's been a really long time since he's been part of a supergroup and not the featured performer and so while all he wants is the spotlight on his pain, instead he's stuck singing harmony. The therapist tells him that it will take time to heal, which he already knew and nobody wants to hear, so he considers his obligation to Pepper fulfilled and resumes trying to buy Bruce Banner's friendship with the lab of his dreams.

Bruce instead offers his friendship for free, which is weird and Tony's not entirely sure how to handle that because being Tony Stark means nothing's free and friendship's usually darned expensive. The only people in his world who aren't on the grift are Pepper and Rhodey and that's why Tony buys them lots of things; absolutely everyone else is interested in the commodity of Tony Stark and he's had plenty of practice to make sure the exchange isn't too uneven.

"I'm kind of hard to deal with," Bruce tells him with a shrug when Tony asks about the freebie. "Even before the Other Guy. Being in my phone contacts is a mixed proposition at best."


Bruce is funny in sly ways, intelligent enough to talk to about interesting things, and such a freaking liberal softie that Tony's almost willing to joke that the Hulk is a rational response to Bruce's peacenik flower-braiding. But Tony has seen the Hulk, has seen Bruce transform into the Hulk, and understands that Bruce's hippie tendencies are a response to that and not the other way around. Bruce eventually tells him that they'd met at least half a dozen times before the Chitauri, but assures him that it's for the best that Tony doesn't remember.

"We were two assholes. It wouldn't have led anywhere even if you'd been sober."

Tony likes that Bruce uses the past tense for both of them so that they can lie to themselves in the service of social niceties.

Bruce is a good long-distance friend. He is excellent with email and enjoys sending Tony ASCII art and those fifty-page-long lists of 'a physicist, an engineer, and a mathematician' jokes that were the 1990s email version of memes and he's a constant source of surprisingly snarky comments on journal articles. They can have hours-long talks on the phone when Bruce picks up and Tony stops taking it personally when it goes straight to voicemail. Bruce is terrible with texting, though, and that's initially something that Tony doesn't get until he realizes that Bruce has every single conversation muted so that he can look at things when he's ready to see them. So it's nice. He hasn't had a new friend since he was sixteen and met Rhodey.

Pepper gives him a look when he says that. He thinks she's making a point about him excluding her and she lets him dangle for way too long before letting him off the hook.

"Haven't you seen me tap dance my way out of disaster enough times? You're doing it for kicks now?"

"The fun I derive from this is a very different fun than watching you squirm when you didn't remember whether you'd slept with someone or not," she tells him and he smiles because she smiles and because this is what he loves about Pepper. She has seen him at his absolute worst, at depths he doesn't even remember sinking to because he was blackout drunk, and can still speak fondly of it and of him. She knows exactly who he is and loves him anyway, like some kind of Pandora who sees hope hiding in the corner of the box and thinks everything will be okay.

Apart from Bruce, however, the other Avengers... don't not matter, but they matter less because Tony doesn't know what to do with them. Thor is only quantifiable in units incommensurate with anything Tony can work with and he's not interested enough to try to learn; he doesn't like being a little person in Thor's eyes, not on his own behalf and not on humanity's. Maybe in a few years he can be gracious like Bruce is gracious and say that they were both assholes then, but right now he can't because he's sure Thor can't, either.

Clint is an open wound that Tony can't look at because all he can see is his own pain; he appreciates that underneath the Robin Hood thing Clint is the kind of up-from-white-trash career soldier he'd always gotten on great with because they are so completely unfazed by Tony's legend, but the rest matters too much now. Tony dreams of dying in the Chitauri galaxy, but he also wakes up screaming from nightmares where Loki's scepter doesn't touch vibranium alloy and a blue-eyed version of him is working alongside Selvig and Clint and the Earth doesn't win that one.

Natasha looks like Natalie and he kind of hates her because of what that represents. He absolutely hates himself for letting so many dangers so close to him and thus to Pepper and Rhodey because he just didn't care. He'd put a target on his back by becoming Iron Man and then by telling everyone that he was Iron Man and then by remaking Stark Industries and instead of being prepared for the obvious and inevitable consequences of these actions, he'd let himself get fooled by Natalie's admittedly impressive tits. He was smart enough to realize that nobody in the PA world looks like Natasha Romanova outside of Hollywood movies, but he hadn't been thinking clearly then and now can only be grateful that Fury sent her to watch him and not worse. Obie's betrayal will haunt him forever and part of that is because Obie had had decades to learn what to do to hurt him and Tony could neither stop him nor reciprocate in kind, but Natasha is literally a human weapon and wouldn't have needed the gauntlet he'd given her to wear.

Rogers... Rogers is his own category of Cannot Deal With Right Now. He was the bogeyman of Tony's childhood, the platonic ideal he grew up thinking his father was disappointed he could never be. And then he was the ghost haunting Stark Industries because Tony hadn't wanted to keep pouring resources into the Search for Captain America but Obie and then Pepper had never allowed him to shut it down. And then he was an actual living man Tony's spite had kept locked in the ice for how many more years than would have been otherwise been necessary. And now he is a boy occasionally sitting in Tony's living room because Pepper kept inviting him over along with the other Avengers still around. Rogers has had no adult life outside of war and it shows; he's got idiot savant social skills, sometimes wise and usually so fucking naïve it's honestly hard to take seriously. He's got old-school manners that charms Pepper thoroughly, but Rogers also has a tactical silence that's nothing to do with being polite.

"He acts like he still thinks he's in some elaborate HYDRA prison," Tony tells Pepper after one of those Avengers happy hours. "JARVIS, text Fury the following: 'who put boots on the sleeping supersoldier?' and accompany it with a relevant mp4."

It will be a few years before Tony realizes that Steve - and he is Steve by then - is quiet because he's drowning in his own misery and not because he's afraid of giving away war secrets. But at the time, Tony amuses himself by coming up with pop culture references that Rogers won't get.

The transition from Child Rogers to Steve doesn't start with Tony helping set him up in his new SHIELD-issued DUMBO loft by frying the surveillance in the bathroom and bedroom. It would be easy to say that it did, but Tony did that out of pity and relief at the formal band breakup and nothing to do with Rogers. Who only started piquing Tony's interest after he asked for help evading his zookeepers so he could get out of town for a few days, but not that much interest because he went down to Arlington to visit graves and not to Vegas to visit hookers.

(Tony tells that to Steve and Pepper and anyone else who will listen, eventually even Barnes, but nobody believes him.)

Steve gets added to the short list of friends who don't want anything from him, but he is the only name on the list of friends who actively fight him when he tries to give them something anyway. Steve's pride is something to behold and Tony has to force himself to stop poking at it just to enjoy the reaction. Steve isn't against gifts per se, but he absolutely fucking hates pity and his still-stunted social skills keep him from reliably discerning between the two. He'll accept clothes and a couch from SHIELD because he thinks his apartment's some kind of BOQ and the Army and SSR gave him clothes to wear, too, but Tony taking him to his Manhattan tailor for a suit that actually fits and flatters him makes him lose his shit because it's charity.

"I have more money than SHIELD does," Tony points out, which doesn't actually help his cause. In the end, he winds up telling Nigel to let Steve pay $200 of the $7800 total and tell him it's the whole thing. Steve thinks the 'bill' is high because while he knows the dollar has deflated a lot since 1945, the last suit he bought was an all-wool job for $21 off the rack. Tony, who has gotten Steve to agree to be taken out to lunch in exchange for ceding the argument, does not tell him that his $200 did not even cover the shirts. Nor does it cover lunch because my god, if there was ever a time to bring back the four martini lunch at The Palm, arguing with Steve Rogers in public for the better part of half an hour is it.

Steve's social skills never really improve all that much; Peggy Carter assures them that there hadn't been much to work with back in 1943, either, but Tony had Pygmalion hopes. Steve's shy and deeply introverted and even more deeply sarcastic and his pride makes the first two worse and the last one weaponized. Dealing with him on a social level requires tactics and strategy and relying on the fact that Steve can't recognize either off the battlefield. What honestly surprises Tony is that he realizes that Steve is worth the gargantuan effort. He's an awkward loner, yes, but he's also very intelligent and desperately curious about the world when nobody can see him. He hides his light under a bushel because he doesn't want to look stupid or be made fun of or, worse, catered to, but there's a lot going on under the bland blond façade and Tony is kind of proud of himself when Steve lets him see any of it.

Which Tony nearly ruins anyway because how was he supposed to let Steve's obsession with the green market go without comment?

"You don't even know which plants to recreationally abuse," he sighs after finding Steve's counter top covered in piles of just-washed greens and a printed out recipe with ink running from the water drops. He'd come over with a not-yet-on-the-market Starkpad loaded with books about history, architecture, art, and everything that was on Rhodey's offered reading list of military theory and practice. Steve is still not a sure thing with gifts, but he has been made to understand that monetary value isn't how Tony judges anything and is therefore not how he should be judged.

"Do you want lunch or not?"

Comments

[sian1359]

I so love your writing. It's not just how you get the characters, tho boy, howdy, do I love your visions/versions of them. There is just something with how you put word to paper that really, really appeals.

[domarzione]

The endless sentences with choose-your-own-adventure dependent clauses are a feature, not a bug!

Many thanks. :)

[marcelo]

This is fantastic.

[domarzione]

Thank you!

[blackrook]

First - yes, you're allowed to reread your own stuff, that's one of the best reasons to write it in the first place!:)

Second - oh, is it a treat to see another bit of FB-verse! And Tony - both as himself and his dynamics with Steve. I've said it before and I'll gladly repeat it - FB series does have the best Steve&Tony friendship I've seen in MCU.

...And I'd still like a Tony&Pepper POV on Steve coming to himself in Revenant...

[domarzione]

Do you know how many hundreds of thousands of words it would take me to get to the back end Revenant? Even if I did it as vignettes and not a straight story...

(Although I had such fun writing this, I am not saying it's not possible. I haven't put it up yet on ao3 because I'm not sure it's done.)

[blackrook]

You can start from the end ? :).
But I'll be happy to read anything in FB-verse and in no particular order :).