Summary: Since being honorably discharged from the Army after an injury sustained while deployed in Afghanistan, Steve Rogers has found a new center of balance as a yoga instructor at a small Manhattan gym. It just stands to figure that one day media crisis-plagued billionaire Tony Stark would come waltzing in and throw everything off. As he guides his controversial new student on the journey to inner peace, Steve learns to deal with some negative energy of his own, and finds something unexpected on the way.
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Descriptions of war injuries and scarring, terrible VA nonsense, mentions of alcoholism, prescription drug use.
Thoughts: I really love the setup for this fic. I love this take on modern!Steve and how he deals with leaving the army. I love how in depth they go into his issues and how he and Tony get together.
I will say that I wish there was more detail in the end. I really enjoyed the ending and how things were wrapped up but it felt a bit like everything sped up for the end once Tony and Steve got together. It was good and I like how it was handled, but I’d LOVE more details.
so awhile back the artist formerly known as exfatalist and i were talking about tony stark and the beginning of the first iron man and i realized that i actually really wanted to know what a tony commencement speech would sound like.
so we batted some ideas back and forth and ended up writing a rough speech in our chat. i put it together in a doc, filled in a few spaces then she went in and filled in even more spaces and put a nice polish on it all and now i get the honors of sharing it with you guys!
this is all exfatalist's talent here. at most i deserve 12% of the credit.
****
“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Tony Stark!”
He walks out onto the stage exuding the word swagger, throwing peace signs and mugging for the cameras. There’s an enthusiastic round of applause that doesn’t die a quick death; a few pranksters in the graduating class keep bringing it back when it threatens to stop entirely, until Tony holds up both hands in a gentle, placating gesture and the graduates calm down with a soft ripple of laughter.
“Ah,” he begins, looking out over his tinted glasses at them all. “Hmm. Okay, wow. You’re all … a lot older than I expected, actually? But I graduated before my voice changed, so I’m not sure I’m an accurate judge of the median age of non-genius college graduates.”
Tony shuffles the cards in his hands before setting them down. He leans forward, resting his elbows on the podium, and slowly removes his sunglasses to squint in the sunlight. “I bet you guys did a lot of partying last night, didn’t you?” he asks, as if he did a lot, himself. “That’s cool, that’s cool. How many of you are still drunk?”
A small cheer rises from the graduates, Tony grins brilliantly.
“That’s awesome. How many of you got laid? Show of hands, come on people.” At least a third of the people sitting in front of him raise their hands and there’s a long, sustained call from the very back.
“That girl has both hands up. Wow, really? I like you,” he pauses for a moment, smiling. “She should be up here giving a speech. Or at least an instructional guide, right? I saw way too many people with their hands down.”
There’s a click-clack of Pepper’s heels and then a hand on his shoulder. “Tony, please,” she whispers past the emergency smile he recognizes from a great many hung-over conferences. She gives him the wide-eyed stare that still makes him a little weak in the knees, squeezes his shoulder, and only walks back to her spot on stage right when he nods his assent to her request.
“Pepper Potts, ladies and gentlemen,” Tony gestures enthusiastically. “I just want to take a moment to talk to you about Pepper Potts, if that’s okay?” From the frantic gestures he can see in his peripheral vision from her, it’s very much not okay - but Tony soldiers on.
“We should all aspire to be even half the person she is. Really. She should be up here giving this speech. She’s perfect. I quite literally gave this woman my heart and told her to throw it away, but you know what she did? She kept it for me. Because she knew I’d need it.” He dares to glance over at her, then, grinning at the way her face is turning pink. She tries to hide behind her hand, shaking her head.
“This woman runs a multi-billion dollar company, makes more charitable contributions in a year than I can count, and still finds time to come up with some of the most brilliant ideas I’ve ever heard to make the world a better place. But most importantly of all? She’s managed to put up with me for decades and shows no sign of slowing down. She is the very definition of amazing.”
She gives him a stern look and he smirks, finally turning back to the crowd.
He thinks for a moment, the audience quiet save for a few murmurs and whispers.
“You guys know about War Machine right?”
The audience claps, a few cheers thrown in, and one very loud person yells, “Iron Patriot!”
Tony pulls a face, but ignores the shout. "Rhodey ... let me tell you something about Colonel James Rhodes, okay? He's a badass. In the suit, out of the suit - but especially out of the suit. Just badass, full stop. He's saved my life more times than I can count. Metaphorically, literally, he punches super-soldiers-gone-wrong with his bare fists and only complains a little bit. I - ? I complain all the time. Questions might be raised about his design tastes, what with that new color scheme and all, but he's still pretty amazing. I'm honestly not sure why he's not up here giving this speech."
Tony looks around and taps his fingers on the podium, taking a breath and laughing it out. "Speaking of terrible patriotic costuming decisions and awkward segues, let me share with you some words of wisdom from Captain America himself - " Tony looks down at his cue cards and reads in a stilted way: "'Tony, I already told you, I am not giving you a quote for your speech. You need to write it yourself.'"
He tosses one of the cue cards over his shoulder and leans into the podium, getting up and personal with the mic. "Captain America, everybody." There's a round of applause - someone in the far back shouts, 'MURRICA!' - and Tony rocks back on his heels with an elated giggle. "Right? No, seriously, I love that guy. He's built like a brick shithouse and takes apart entire government infrastructures when no one - namely me - is looking. He loves the Internet, he makes fantastic omelets, and great, motivational speaking seems to come naturally to him. I'm blaming Hitler for that one. Greatest generation, you know? I have no idea why he's not up here right now."
Tony looks around, like there's an explanation somewhere on stage, the size of an awkward elephant, and he's just missing it. "Captain America? No? Okay - " He turns back to the mic. " - well, looks like you're stuck with me. Tragedy, really."
Again, the crowd laughs and Tony seems to feed off it a little, emboldened to finally come to the point he’s been rambling through.
"And I guess what I'm trying to say here, if I'm managing to say anything at all, is that ... we all know that our lives are going to be what we make of them, but it might take us years - thirty-some years, in my case - to realize that the most important factor will always be who we choose to surround ourselves with. Family, friends, all the people in your life who you decide to let in. The people who encourage you, who inspire you, who believe in you when you might not believe in yourself. I've been lucky enough to know some truly amazing people in my life, myself excluded." There's a round of laughter and Tony huffs a soft laugh, himself.
"They asked me to come here today and talk about heroism in the face of a changing world, to say something inspirational to a group of young people at the beginning of their heroic journeys. But I wouldn't know a damn thing about heroics if it weren't for the people I am lucky enough to call my friends."
He pauses there for a breath, to let the whole crowd of smiling faces parse that bit of information. The crowd is silent, like they're waiting for the punchline to a joke, but that's it. That's all he has and it's the truth.
Tony straightens his shoulders, shuffles his cue cards back into order, and looks out over the sea of caps and gowns, adding, "I hope that one day you will all be able to count yourselves as lucky as I do today. Now, let's get out there and, together, make the world a better place."
The crowd erupts into thunderous applause and Tony ducks his head, pleased with being so well-received. When he dares to glance over, Pepper still has her hand up, but is now failing to cover a huge smile and doing very little about the tears shining in her eyes.
rachel, i keep picturing drunk!steve acting like a nice drunk girl. like thor takes him to asgard and steve doesn't realize his supermetabolism won't be able to handle asgardian mead and he gets SO DRUNK. eventually, thor finds him in the bathroom telling fandral how shiny and great his armor looks~
KASSY
fandral is just soaking up the attention and being really taken with steve and then steve compliments him on his beard and fandral leans in all conspiratorially and tells steve that it’s actually a little secret but thor found this wonderful little thing on midgard that comes in a small tub and you leave it in your beard for a few minutes and when you wash it out it’ll be soft as a wood nymph’s behind! and steve just nods seriously because he’s legitimately interested in what fandral is saying
and thor is just smiling brightly at two of his good friends becoming friends until he sees a certain glimmer in fandral’s eye. that’s when thor puts his arm around steve’s shoulder and pulls him back out to the ballroom saying that he thought tony was looking for him earlier
(at which point steve just starts gushing about how awesome tony is and how handsome he is, did you notice how handsome he is, thor? and thor just nods sagely while steve extols the wonders of tony stark)
100% All Natural, No Imitation Booty. Accept No Substitutes. (Warning: Due to the nature of where this booty is processed, trace samples of meatball may be present.)
Not gonna lie it’s waiting for AOL dial up internet to connect at like 8 at night because that’s when mom/dad didn’t care if they missed a call and waiting to play some really generic AOL games at the age of 9-ish.
8) Describe your dream house.
There’s two totally different answers for this. One is a huge older style house/mansion that I share with (originally) Ariana surrounded by woods. This has since been modified to include just general sharing with friends, possibly still in the woods. The other is a brownstone along Commonwealth Avenue Mall with my boyfriend. The only other thing I really want is wood flooring. I’m not a big fan of carpet.
exfatalist replied to your post:I was looking at jobs yesterday and there’s this...
Apply! Most of the time, the “qualifications” field in ads is to preemptively weed out people who feel like they wouldn’t get the job anyway. If you know you’ll be great at it, apply and tell them just that! :)
I am currently updating my resume to hopefully reflect that!
