Ooh, ask game!
Can we do Tony doing 15 for Steve?
many thanks to the steve discord for brainstorming steve slander 🤭
15. defending their name when they’re not present
Tony wants to let it go because he's only at the Trisk to meet Steve for lunch, and what does he care what two idiots with the clearance levels of a Central Park squirrel and a subway rat have to say about Steve? Tony keeps his head down, his cap hiding his face. Steve should be down any minute now and Tony isn't particularly interested in making a scene at the moment.
"—American symbol my ass," Squirrel continues. "I mean, maybe that was true in the forties. Easy to be a good guy back then, right? I still can't believe they put him back on that pedestal."
But seriously, what?
"You're telling me," Rat says. "What's SHIELD even paying for him to do? They don't seriously expect us to believe a meathead like that is running point on actual missions or leading the goddamn Avengers. He's just a figurehead."
Tony actually has to close his eyes because he's starting to see red, and as soon as he does, he sees Steve the night before a team operation, sitting by himself and going back over the map they'd outlined their plan on, over and over until he's sure he's come up with every last exit strategy to make sure he can get everyone out in one piece.
Just a figurehead.
"Yeah, a figurehead I have to see at work walking around with a stick up his ass," Squirrel says. "I swear I've never seen him smile. You think they replaced the real Captain America with an android or something?"
"Something like that. Either way, incapable of feeling anything."
And then they laugh and it's not the nastiest thing they've said in the last few minutes, but for some reason, that little comment is what finally sets Tony off.
There's a lot he could say, and stunningly, most of what he's thinking right now isn't even venomous. He's thinking about how much Steve smiles these days, and how he'll take the shield off his back and melt against someone's shoulder on the ride home, and how easily he allows his heart to get broken over everything from a sad movie to an underfunded animal shelter—
But god forbid he doesn't cartwheel down the hallways at SHIELD's headquarters grinning ear to ear, apparently, and if these two can't manage some basic decency for Steve Rogers of all people, they definitely don't deserve to know about all that softness.
So Tony lifts up his cap and says, "Are we gonna have a problem?"
The way they freeze up when they see Tony's face and realise that it's him they've been talking shit within earshot of isn't even satisfying. It just tells Tony that they wouldn't have the guts to say half of what they've been saying to Steve's face, and he realises that he's a little more ticked off than he thought he was.
"Uh—"
"You know he's a better man than the two of you stacked on top of each other, right? Not only does he run point here and lead the Avengers back in New York, he's half the reason this place exists. And maybe the reason you've never seen him smile is because he had to look at you. See, I'm looking at you right now. Am I smiling?"
Rat looks nothing short of petrified. "Mr. Stark, we—"
"And, for your information, Steve's a fucking cupcake. So if he's actually a dick to you, take a good look in the mirror and think long and hard about why. Now if I—"
"Tony?"
Tony shuts his mouth and turns around.
Steve is standing there, looking genuinely confused. "I'm a cupcake?" His gaze travels past Tony and lands on Squirrel and Rat, who he nods at. "Hi there."
Tony turns back around momentarily just to say, semi threateningly, "We're leaving. Go do some thinking." Then, at Steve, "Come on. I'm hungry."
"What was going on with those kids?" Steve asks, glancing over his shoulder as they head out.
"Nothing," Tony says. "I just can't stand it when people are wrong and don't know it."
