Chapter 2
Tony is itching to get back to his research, he’s found some big things after doing some digging, but sadly he has to keep up appearances. “Mr. Stark,” a smooth, attractive voice says from behind him, “you never called.”
He turns to find that irritating doctor he’d dealt with a couple months ago behind him. “Stephen Strange,” he says, unsure if he remembered the name right. He knows for sure the last name was ‘Strange’ anyways. But the doctor grins, clearly pleased that he’d been remembered in a way that tells Tony he’s cocky, arrogant. He does his best to find that irritating.
“And I’ve been told you’re not good with remembering names,” he says. “Perhaps that’s only with people that aren’t memorable enough.” His tone is as arrogant as his facial expression and Tony would like to tell him he’s not all that interesting either but that’s not true. He had predicted the palladium poisoning, and he had been right about metal being a bad choice. Tony feels less pressure on his chest now that he’s altered his materials slightly. He still has only eighty percent lung capacity but that extra ten percent had been a lot of literal breathing room.
“What exactly brings you here?” he asks, changing the subject. He doesn’t want to give Stephen the impression he thinks he’s all that impressive even if it’s mostly not true.
Stephen raises an eyebrow, “what brings a doctor to a dinner event on medicine?” he asks like Tony is particularly dense for asking something like that.
He rolls his eyes, “do you go to every event about medicine or only the ones that interest you?” he asks in the same haughty tone he keeps getting out of Stephen.
It seems to make its point because Stephen smiles, unruffled. “I’m a guest speaker. I wouldn’t have expected to find you here though- what’s your interest?” he asks.
Tony doesn’t think Stephen cares much about his interest here at all; he’s just making the usual small talk. “I was the one who donated all the money to your research, I guess,” he says. “Pretty sure I read ‘Christine Palmer’ on the paperwork though,” he adds just to be an ass.
Stephen doesn’t take offense at all though, his smile gets wider. “My partner, then. Of medicine,” he adds. “She’s impressive, but not as good as me.”
Tony raises an eyebrow, “which one of you is the one using trans-sectioned spinal cords to stimulate neurogenesis in the central nervous system?” he asks. He suspects Strange but his laugh confirms it.
“That would be me. Christine as some strange hang up in the ER. Complete waste of her time- she’s a brilliant doctor, she could be spending more time helping me with my research but if she insists on losing time in the ER that’s not my problem,” he says, shaking his head.
Odd response coming from someone so arrogant but Tony finds himself interested in the turn in conversation. “I take it you and Christine have worked together quite a bit then- is she here?” he asks mostly to keep the doctor on his toes. He’s the one who chose to diverge from talking himself up for a moment and Tony has always liked toying with arrogant minds when he senses no malevolence behind them.
Stephen shakes his head, “she’s never been fond of these things. Looks like you’re stuck with me,” he says.
Tony laughs, “you’ll find I’m not stuck with anyone I don’t want to be with.”
*
On any given day Stephen gets bored fast- his first, second, and third loves are all medicine and most people simply have no patience for it. He’s never cared about that because he hardly cares about the approval of others, but it does usually make his conversations blessedly short. He’s never been fond of people either and Tony finds this endlessly amusing, dark eyes glittering with laughter. “You’re a doctor who doesn’t like people?” he asks. “Your bedside manner must be awful.”
Stephen wrinkles his nose, “bedside manner is for nurses.” He has no time to waste on meaningless chitchat with people over whether or not they’ll be okay. His job is to fix their bodies, not play therapist- he isn’t that kind of doctor and has zero intention on pretending to be.
“I feel bad for nurses that work with you,” Tony says but its obvious that he finds the situation funny in a way that most usually don’t. Frankly he has no idea why, he’s a pleasure to be around but that’s their problem.
“So do they but I refuse to dole out meaningless words to some ninny in a bed who needs comfort. It’s a waste of my time,” he says, nose in the air.
Tony grins and leans forward, full focus on Stephen just the way he likes it. “I don’t believe that,” he says, amusement still alight in his features. “I think you care a lot about people but you don’t want to get attached for some reason.”
He wrinkles his nose to hide that Tony has hit too close to home. “I don’t care about my patients, I fix them. That’s better in my opinion.”
“Well you have to care about them to want to fix them, right? I mean if you really didn’t care you wouldn’t be a very good doctor let alone a world renowned one,” he points out.
Stephen shrugs delicately, “I don’t really think about it much,” he lies. He can tell that Tony sees right through it and that’s… compelling and frightening at once. People don’t ever see past the walls he puts up and he’s always rather liked it that way. But the fact that Tony isn’t buying his argument is undeniably curious and it makes Stephen want to pull away and move closer in almost equal parts.
Tony reaches out, brushing his fingers along the inside of Stephen’s wrist in a way that reminds him of checking for someone’s pulse but erotic. It’s an odd mixture of feelings. “I’m sure you don’t, doctor,” he murmurs and Stephen quite likes the way Tony says ‘doctor’.
*
Tony has a lot of information at his disposal and he’s not sure how to release it. Scratch that- he knows exactly how to release it its just a matter of what he wants to release when that’s the problem. Government secrets really aren’t something that surprises Tony, everyone in the public knows the government has them, but even he’d been surprised to find out that Captain America is still alive. He’d been found last year in some area Howard probably searched dozens of times and when he’d been defrosted they’d been surprised to find he still had a heart beat.
For a long time he considers the information. It isn’t entirely that important aside from fringe conspiracy theorists that have stupid ideas about what happened to him, but it’s the decision from some military group to put him into action that makes the decision for him. He makes sure the information goes to a few sources he’s determined are decent plus his own side project blog. Blogging has never really been his thing but social media is influential so he uses it to his advantage. Besides, nothing that’s lacking for traceable evidence is ever posted on it anyways.
Since his stunt on himself and Obi he’s earned a lot of credit for being reliable, and after a few politician’s careers met their ends mostly for money laundering people flat out liked him. He supposes people dislike politicians enough to overlook their offense to his outing himself for what was essentially terrorism. He still has no idea why anyone came to his defense or why they still do but he’s determined that his fanboys are the worst.
He’s sitting back and waiting for Twitter to explode when Rhodey calls him. “Holy shit,” he starts, cutting right to the chase of why he’s calling Tony guesses. “Captain America is alive, man. That hacker found a shit ton if video evidence and my bosses are losing it.”
Tony snorts, “so the symbol of the American Dream lives,” he says blandly.
Rhodey pauses for a beat, waiting for more before he speaks again. “Dude, Captain America is alive! How are you not losing it right now?” he asks.
Because he already knew but he can’t tell Rhodey that- he disapproves of Tony’s hacking activities even if he has no idea he’s telling Tony that to his face. “I already know everything there is to know about the guy, Howard made sure of that. What’s the real deal being alive going to do for me?” He doesn’t have to fake sounding bitter and annoyed, he’s always hated that Howard compared him to Steve fucking Rogers all the damn time. Rhodey buys it.
“Shit, right. Sorry. It is kind of a big thing though, for the rest of us,” Rhodey says.
Twitter explodes a few moments before Rhodey says that and within a matter of minutes #CaptainAmericaLives is trending. “I know that. But I don’t think there’s much exciting about some dude from the forties being alive, he’s probably racist,” he points out.
Rhodey makes an irritated noise, “oh come on man, don’t go ruining him like that for me. Some of us regard him as a hero, you know,” he says and Tony laughs.
“I thought you were more of a Martin Luther King Jr. kind of guy,” he says.
“I can like both at once even if I have a slight preference for MLK,” Rhodey says primly. Tony smiles and shakes his head.
*
Steve would have preferred not to have been outted but he’s not entirely sure why SHIELD is freaking out about it. So someone found some videos of him, its not like he’s been making an effort to hide. People didn’t even recognize him when he was out in the streets. Of course now that Google earth function could find him if he were an ant in a hill but he still has no idea why SHIELD is losing it.
“You do understand the threat of being hacked, right?” Natasha asks.
He rolls his eyes, “I’m old, not incapable of learning. I’m aware of the dangers but I’m also aware that there are countermeasures. Figure out what went wrong and make sure it won’t happen again,” he says. He might not understand all the ins and outs, not fully, but he knows enough to know that this is the kind of thing that can be properly dealt with.
Natasha sighs, “that isn’t good enough here. Whoever broke into our systems is smarter than the person who made them and the person who made them is one of the smartest people in the world.”
“Howard,” Steve says, familiar with his role in founding SHIELD. Natasha nods.
“So now we have to go talk to his son,” she mumbles, hands gripping the steering wheel tight.
“Something you’re not looking forward to, I guess?” He knows actually- Natasha isn’t the nervous type and yet she seems rather on edge.
She shakes her head, “Tony is… arrogant,” she says finally. Probably no different than Howard, he supposes, and he knows how to deal with him.
Of course when they make it to Tony’s house, if you could even call the large structure that, he gets a better idea of why Natasha hadn’t been looking forward to dealing with Tony. He looks at the oversized house and frowns at it, “how is this thing even on this cliff? Doesn’t seem like a good idea structurally.” It’s right on the edge of the damn thing, who would be irresponsible enough to put a house there?
Tony looks behind him, “yeah I got told it was impossible but here it is so guess the architects were wrong,” he says in a sharp voice that confuses Steve. What the hell did he do to earn that?
“Still seems like a stupid idea if you get bad weather,” Steve says back in a prickly tone, irritated with Tony’s attitude.
“Yeah, well, you aren’t really an expert in house building are you?” Tony asks, head titled to the side as he gives Steve a hard look. What does this guy have against him?
“And you are?” he asks, annoyance leaking into his tone.
“I know more than the experts, proof is in the supposedly impossible pudding,” he says, gesturing behind him. “But I’m not technically an architect.”
“You don’t look like anything particularly impressive to me,” Steve tells him, done with his bad attitude. Beside him Natasha winces and takes a step to the left like she expects this to be a fight. It’d be a quick one if it was, Steve doubts Tony is enhanced and he’s got that thing in his chest. Seems like an obvious weakness to him.
Tony gives him a cruel smile, “you don’t look like anything impressive to me either. So much for an all American hero,” he says, turning his back and walking back into his house. Natasha sighs and follows, obviously not happy with this turn of events.
“Stark, get back here, we have problems!”