Chapter 22
“Mr. Rogers.”
Steve startled and looked up from the stove, it was 7:30 and he had just gotten back from his run. He was never going to get used to JARVIS’ disembodied voice; it was creepy. “What?”
“Sir is on the line if you would like to speak to him.”
“Hey, Spangles. J said you wanted to talk?”
“Stark! Where are you! Get down here so I can talk to you.”
“No can do, Cap. I’m already gone.”
“Gone? Gone where?”
“On the way to the airport, you know I’m heading back to Hawaii today. I need to make a stop in Washington, so I headed out early. You were gone on your run when I left. You’ll just have to talk to me now.”
Steve growled, Stark had been especially obnoxious recently, “what was that yesterday!”
“What?”
“My override codes didn’t work! We need those to be able to respond to an emergency. You need to reset them right now!”
“Yeah, that’s not happening, Cap. You use them whenever JARVIS tells you I’m busy so that you don’t have to wait. You’ve interrupted, I don’t know how many business calls and meetings, for trivial things like asking me to find your bike when it was towed by the police. Something that, as an adult, you should have been able to deal with on your own. Or the ketchup thing, that was beyond rude. I don’t think you understand that you wanting something done right now, is not the same thing as an emergency. J is perfectly capable of telling me when there’s an emergency, I’ll just have to rely on him.”
“Yesterday was an emergency!”
“Yeah, how so?”
“Iron Man was seen attacking a weapons convoy! You didn’t have permission to go on mission!”
“Uh huh. You do remember just what Iron Man was created to do, don’t you, Rogers? I don’t need permission from you to continue destroying Stark weapons in the hands of terrorists. It’s rare, now days, for me to get word of anyone moving my stuff. I certainly wasn’t going to let it get away.”
“You can’t be doing this, Stark! This is a team! You don’t get to decide to just go off on a mission without telling me!”
“Like you and the spy twins and Wilson are always doing? What’s this really about?”
“You never follow orders! What if we had needed you, you wouldn’t have been there. Besides, Nat says it would have been a lot more valuable to find out where those weapons were going. You shouldn’t have done it. You don’t know what kind of trouble you could cause!”
“Yeah, no. I’m not leaving my weapons out there as bait because spy twin one, wants to,” Stark was so disrespectful of Natasha. Natasha said it was hurt feelings because of the negative review she gave him that made him a consultant instead of a full member. “There’s no trouble, I liaised with both the US military and the country I entered. Those weapons aren’t going to be fired on civilians now. Everyone’s happy, the end.”
“No! You need to get back here Stark! You can’t be going off on your own. I’m the leader of the team!”
“Yeah, and I’m not on the team,” Stark didn’t give him a chance to explain that that didn’t matter, Steve was still in charge. “Listen, Spangles, I have to go. I have a call from Pepper. It was a big convoy, I haven’t seen so many of my weapons altogether like that in a long time. So I’ll be in Washington doing an after Iron Man debrief with some generals then I’m off to Hawaii. I’ll still be there when the compound is opened up to you. Maria has been involved every step of the way, have fun breaking in the new building. Bye!”
The click of the phone disconnecting only made Steve more angry. He was starting to think this dating thing wasn’t going to work. Stark was pretty, but his attitude and personality were terrible. Fuming, Steve stormed into the gym and straight to the heavy bag.
They hadn’t even kissed yet, even though Steve had been trying to build up to that. Nat had always said Stark was easy to lead around with the right incentive, it shouldn’t be this hard. Although for being such a playboy, Stark was really bad at reading cues. No doubt his previous partners had only wanted Stark for his money, it was a good thing that Steve was here now; he only wanted the best for Stark.
Stark still had a subpar personality, but he’d gotten a little more attached than he had meant to. He just needed to find a way to get control over him. He needed to talk to Nat, between the two of them they should be able to come up with a strategy to get Stark to designate a new Iron Man pilot. Sam should be able to come up with a list easily, it couldn’t be that hard. Nat could help him rein Stark in; he was most useful taking care of their gear. As a civilian, he shouldn’t be out there taking risks.
Maybe this move to the country would be a good thing. There would be a lot fewer distractions away from the city. Stark wouldn’t be running off as much, he'd be around more. They would finally be able to move their relationship forward. He’d have to think about all of it.