shield | open post.

[ Steve isn't going to let it go, but he is just as likely to pursue the topic again as he is to drive himself crazy wondering what it means. Either way that can wait until after they've eaten.

Besides, Tony has already changed the subject in the time it took Steve to greet and thank Happy. ]

All food was terrible back in the day. [ Not that they weren't grateful for what they had, but Steve isn't going to sit here and pretend that the 21st century isn't a culinary miracle. ] But yeah, hospital food was even worse.

I'm willing to bet they served boiled newspapers or something during the Depression. [Tony makes a face just before he licks a stray drip of ketchup off the side of his hand.] Don't ask me how you'd boil a newspaper, either. Newspaper soup?

[...okay, now he's just rambling. It may be slightly drug-induced, but he shows no signs of being about to fall over or faceplant into Steve's blankets.]

[ Steve opens his mouth to say something wry about the taste not being too far off from boiled newspaper, actually, but ends up shoving a handful of fries in his mouth instead. The sight of Tony licking his hand has, for unspecified reasons, featured in more of his fantasies than Steve would like to admit. The memory of those fantasies wash over Steve with all the subtlety of a tsunami, and stuffing his face the safest thing he can think to do. ]

Good call on the fries, [ Steve says, a bit over-enthusiastic, and not quite finished chewing yet. ]

[Tony's not unfamiliar with the feeling of arousal washing over him in Steve's presence, but usually there's some sort of trigger, like Steve ripping a log apart with his bare hands, or Steve doing that deeply erotic quiet angry voice while Tony imagines being pushed up against the wall and kissed breathless, or Steve working out in the gym. (It's a long list.) And while Tony hasn't exactly gotten laid anytime in the last five years, Steve in a hospital gown with bandages on his arm and shoulder isn't usually the kind of thing that would do it for him.]

Mmhm, [Tony agrees with a full mouth. He's not going to think about this too much. Sometimes bodies just react. It's a normal thing (that shouldn't happen to someone his age).]

How attached are you to having a physical shield that you carry around?

[ If Steve didn't know any better, he would suspect Tony of mind reading, the way that he tosses out a lifeline just when Steve is desperate for a distraction. But if Tony could read Steve's thoughts, the conversation would have veered in a very different direction— or ended altogether.

He tilts his head in Tony's direction, considering. ]

Is that your subtle way of bringing up how I lost it again? 'Cause I feel like this one was more on Thanos...

[Tony's lips twist in a wry smile. He's not blaming Steve for losing his shield, no. He's actually been working on this concept since before the battle - before Siberia, actually. At least now he doesn't have to convince Steve to give it up (again).]

No, I just don't think you'll wanna hold onto that hammer forever. You don't strike me as that kinda guy.

No, I don't think so, [ Steve agrees with a slight shake of his head. ] I'd rather see Thor get comfortable with it again.

[ Easier said than done, but if Steve can help it, he's going to make sure everyone is at least in good shape before drifting their separate ways again.

He hooks his index finger around to straw to bring it closer, then practically inhales two-thirds of his milkshake. ]

So what were you thinking?

[Tony spaces out for a moment at the sight of Steve's cheeks hollowing as he sucks the milkshake down, so, okay, maybe he was wrong about the hospital gown thing. Maybe Steve's just distracting no matter what.]

Wha- [He blinks. Right. Focus.] Oh, the shield. I've been having success with trials on zero-point emission - kind of an energy shield? You wear the emitter on your wrist and it creates a shield on command. You can even throw it - well, you should be able to throw it. I'm still tweaking the range on the projectile.

Or we could do something with nanites and body armor. That could be cool, too.

[ At first deeply occupied with the important work of peeling the wrapper from his first burger, the immediacy of Steve's hunger recedes as he listens to Tony. That lump in his throat is back, though he wouldn't call it grief this time, or even sadness, necessarily. He just knows that whatever the emotion, he's feeling a whole lot of it. ]

You've given this some thought. [ Steve does his best to sound casual, as if Tony's answer doesn't have the power to make or break him, when it almost certainly does. ]

[Play it cool, Stark, Tony tells himself. There's no need for Steve to know how many iterations of body armor he's drawn up over the years, how long he's spent on the tech for an energy shield. It's clearly just something he threw together overnight, much like the solution to time travel.]

Gotta have something to keep me busy so I don't get into trouble.

[Does that sound like a good excuse? That's debatable, but, hey, Steve's eating burgers, he might not notice.]

[ A harsh snort of disbelief escapes Steve before his brain can catch up with his mouth. That's— okay, a bit more rude than he would have liked, but really, Tony knows for a fact that Steve wasn't born yesterday. The idea of Tony Stark having to try to keep busy is beyond belief, even now. If he knows Tony (and maybe he doesn't anymore, if he ever really did, but he's sure about this much) the man has spent the past five years throwing all of his genius and money at the never-ending list of crises left in Thanos' wake. ]

Sorry, it's just— if you could avoid trouble by keeping busy, you'd have the reputation of a saint. [ He tries to sound amused, for the most part, wary of antagonizing Tony at this stage. ]

Hey, that depends on your definition of trouble.

[Tony grins impishly at Steve over the rim of his cup as he lifts it to take a drink.]

A lot of things that would disqualify me from sainthood aren't things that I would consider trouble. But as you may have noticed, I get bored easily, and I like to have different projects to play around with.

[At least until he latches onto one with laser focus and refuses to let go till it's done.]

So what else are you working on? [ There is a small part of Steve that itches to rock the boat and see where the current carries him, but he and Tony are freshly reconciled and Steve has been careful not to jeopardize that. So when he asks, it's not a challenge— it's Steve sending signals that he's interested.

...In the science. He's interested in the science. ]

I've been doing a lot with nanotech - trying to get it smaller and more efficient. Had some success with using it in small scale trials to combat the loss of plankton in the marine ecosystem, but we decided robots in whales might be bad for PR. And possibly not great for the whales, although they're already consuming enough microplastic that a few hundred thousand nanites shouldn't make a real difference. But apparently that's how you end up with bad sci-fi movies, never mind that a, we probably deserve to be overthrown by whales for what humanity's done to the earth, and b, cetacean mobility on land is still a major issue.

[Did you miss Tony's weird train of thought rambling, Steve?]

I'm thinking about the electric car market, too. Elon Musk is a douchebag - actually, scratch the electric car thing, I'm going for space travel. Knowing some aliens should give me a leg up on the competition, right?

[ Steve makes a valiant effort to follow along, he does, but Tony loses him at the first mention of whales. First Steve remembers the pod of whales he saw in the Hudson, and then he remembers telling Natasha about it, and then he remembers that it will always be one of his last memories with her. There won't be any new ones from now on.

The lump that forms in his throat makes it difficult to keep eating, so he puts the burger down and awkwardly wipes his greasy fingers against a napkin. By the time he tunes back in to what Tony is saying, the subject has changed.

Steve clears his throat to speak and hopes he doesn't sound too pitiable. ]

Normally I'd say getting Nebula to let you reverse engineer her ship probably wades into murky ethical territory, but it's like you said: Elon Musk is a douchebag.

If I had any desire to ever time travel again - which I don't - I would absolutely record you saying the word "douchebag" and get some Pym particles to show my dad.

[Never mind that Howard has probably heard Steve swear before - Tony knows that Steve isn't a Boy Scout, and that soldiers in every branch of the service can make him sound tame. Tony was brought up on that very specific image of Captain America, and there's only one person to thank for that.]

Anyway! Nebula likes me. As much as Nebula likes anyone, which is more like Nebula usually doesn't want to kill me. I taught her to play paper football.

[Not that he wants to think of those endless days drifting in space, all those recordings he made on his helmet. Most of them were to Pepper - even apart, it's just natural for him to talk to her - but he'd made one for Steve, towards the end. It's probably still lurking somewhere in his servers. He should really delete that.]

Be a waste of Pym particles just to show him something he's heard before. [ Steve makes a sound somewhere between laugh and sigh, gently shaking his head. It used to rankle when Tony teased Steve this way, like he was more of a symbol than a person. But Steve knows whatever pedestal he lived on in Tony's mind has long since crumbled, so now the jokes are truly just that and nothing more. ]

You know, it's easier to picture Nebula playing tackle football. Did you let her win? [ Steve asks with one raised eyebrow and zero judgment. His self-preservation instinct leaves something to be desired, but even he would think twice before angering Nebula. ]

We used to play a lot of paper football in the sick ward. Paper anything, really. One time I drew a checkers board on a place mat and we used buttons for game pieces.

Neither of us were in shape for tackle football. [They'd barely had enough energy for paper football, there at the end, but he doesn't want to think about that, about how he'd just assumed they'd die drifting somewhere in space.] But, nah, she was a fast learner. I mean, you're a fighter, you know how it is. Damn good aim.

I'd offer to get you a real checkers board, but I'm not sure you aren't gonna go and check yourself out of here tomorrow. [It's only half-joking; Tony knows there's a real chance of that happening. And he's also pretty sure that even with the serum, Steve needs more time than that to heal.] I'd do the same, but Rhodey told Happy to sit on me if I try, and I can't actually fire him anymore.

[Not that he would ever fire Happy anyway, and he's pretty sure Happy's stopped believing his threats.]

Maybe not that fast. I'd never hear the end of it if Sam or Bucky showed up and I'd already checked myself out.

[ Steve gives a little shrug, like it's a casual calculus and he's just weighing his options. There is truth in it: he can't wait to see them, and in his current state, he would be justified in letting them come to him. But there's a not-insignificant part of him that selfishly wants to stay right here, in Tony's presence, as long as Tony will entertain him.

The idea that Tony would come back not out of an odd sense of obligation from having shared a near-death experience, but just to play checkers and pass the time with Steve, has butterflies practicing acrobatics in his belly. ]

I don't think I'd hear the end of it.

[He's not sure he's on speaking terms with Barnes, but Tony's pretty sure the man would make an exception just to yell at him for letting Steve escape. And he knows Wilson would - although everyone knows better than to blame Tony for Steve being, well, Steve. It would take a goddamn force of nature to stop him, and Tony honestly thinks Steve would still come out on top.]

I'm more of a chess guy. Well, actually, I'm more of a video games guy, but I'm willing to go old-school if I have to. [Older school than the arcade cabinets in his game room.] You know how to play chess? I bet you've hung out in Central Park and swapped stories with the guys playing there.

Oh, no way, I'm not playing chess with you. [ Steve raises his good hand up in surrender, shaking his head. ] I bet I'd have better luck against Deep Blue.

[ It's a pop culture reference only Steve Rogers could be proud of— several decades out of date and only appealing to a very niche audience— but it's rare that he can come up with something remotely close to Tony's field of interest, so this still counts as a win. ]

We need something that's just as much mathematical probability as it is dumb luck. Even out the playing field for us simple folk. [ Steve suspects the grin plastered on his face is making him look rather goofy, but he can't seem to help it, feeling emboldened now that Tony seems set on coming back tomorrow. ]

DUM-E coulda beat Deep Blue. [Tony waves his hand - it's an exaggeration - but he's also smiling broadly at both the flattery and the pop culture reference. It might be outdated, but the fact that Steve knows about technology that happened while he was frozen is honestly more endearing than picking up on modern advances.

He's also pretty sure that while Steve wouldn't be on his level - very few people are - it wouldn't take him long to catch on. Chess is, at its heart, about tactics and war, and Tony knows damn well that Steve can strategize when he puts his mind to it.]

Simple folk, [Tony chuckles, shaking his head.] Sure, Rogers, if that's what you wanna call yourself. But this is how we're gonna end up playing something like Uno or Yahtzee, and that's kinda sad for two grown men.

Hey, at least it ain't Bingo. [ Steve says with a shrug and a smirk. Frankly, he's surprised he got a chance to crack that joke before Tony did. Steve is used to feeling like he's been left in the dust when Tony speaks, and it's a small thrill to be ahead of him now, even in this minor and inconsequential way. ]

You know, if being 'kinda sad for two grown men' to play is a disqualifying factor, that's gonna limit our options.

I mean, we'd have to get someone else to call the numbers, and it's really no fun unless you got cutthroat little old ladies playing ten cards at a time.

[How does Tony Stark know so much about bingo? It's a mystery.]

Well, only having two people kinda limits us, too. That's pretty much dominoes, dice, or a handful of card games.

[ Steve remembers laughing when Tony's words invoked a crystal clear mental image of the rec room he used to pass on his way to visit Peggy. It was never more raucous in that room than on Bingo Night, although the elderly men arguing in Spanish over dominoes came in close second. Something had possessed Steve to mention that the space where his group meets is also used to host the occasional bingo night, and then he took it further by suggesting that he and Tony should go sometime. In retrospect that had to be the first indication that Steve was getting tired, and sure enough he started yawning soon after.

The next morning, he wakes up and stares at the ceiling, reflecting on the previous night for all of five minutes before his nurse stops by, closely trailed by Bucky and Sam. That puts last night out of Steve's mind and he spends the next few hours catching them up on the last five years while they catch him up on the past few days.

When Tony appears in the doorway just before noon— at least, that's Steve's general idea of the time, which could be entirely off— he gets two very curious looks from his friends that he refuses to dignify. His cheeks heat up as Bucky and Sam make thin excuses for why they suddenly have to leave. He hasn't said anything to them, for all the good it did— they're still as subtle as a jackhammer and Tony is standing right there.

Once it's just the two of them, Steve's annoyance slides into something more like panic. For all that Tony said he would be back, deep down Steve couldn't believe it until he saw it. Consequentially he is totally unprepared. ]

Hey, you're back. How're you feeling? [ He just needs to act casual and focus the conversation on Tony and everything will be just fine. ]

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