@fatedvoyage / steve: "Do you think the team needs jackets?" Steve had his face rested on his fist as he sat on the opposite side of Tony's work table, sketchbook in front of him as he played with a few designs.
also paging @purplearchcr to the front desk to see the bullshit she started
The toaster oven in the kitchenette was on the fritz again. While they weren't exactly in danger of starving, no - they were on the SHIELD dole, after all - it and the microwave had become, in Tony's opinion, probably the second and third most important pieces of equipment that weren't the Iron Man on the Chimera, after the refurbished and refitted reactor. And sure, they could always get a new one somewhere, but it seemed like kind of a shame to do so when a little rewiring was all it really needed.
So that was his little project of the day. Not as glamorous as whatever Bruce was doing across the hall, but it was good, honest work and everyone could stop bitching about how the toaster oven was, and here he was quoting one of the SHIELD guys, a piece of shit, when the wiring no longer had frays that were threatening to become both breaks and a fire hazard.
And he had Steve there, to keep him company; that was something that was finally starting to feel normal again, to the point he'd let himself get drawn into the somewhat mindless rhythm (for him, anyway) of inspecting and replacing element and button wiring., letting his mouth otherwise run on autopilot
"What?" He paused, where he was wrapping electrical tape around a splice in the wiring, straightening in his chair so he could squint at Steve in what was part suspicion, part confusion. Was that a dig about Steve's jacket? Because it was still hanging there, right where Tony left it. Where Steve had clearly not reclaimed it. Which, Tony was pointing out, not his actual fault. He wasn't holding it hostage.
His attention moved from Steve, to the sketchbook in front of him, and suddenly everything made (a little) more sense. There was no missing that stylized Avengers A, it was about the only unifying symbol they, as a team, had ever really had. And after...Everything, it wasn't nearly the symbol of hope and inspiration it had once been. The hard part, really, was going to be trying to convey that to Steve, that maybe walking around out there with that symbol plastered on one of them was probably the worst idea since the Hindenburg. Steve was optimistic, was convinced if they did enough and tried hard enough, they could turn things around, make themselves heroes again, enough so that Tony could almost believe it, if it was Steve. He didn't want to be the one to crush that optimism, if he could help it.
And, hell, it wasn't like an Avengers A was any worse than being in costume out in the world, was it, Tony's less than positive feelings about matching anything aside or not.
He chose to take the diplomatic route, wrapping the splice in the wire one more time before tearing the tape and sitting it aside. "I don't know. Do you think the team needs jackets?" Which was probably a supremely stupid question, considering he had the evidence right in front of him. There was a selection there, on the pages of Steve's sketchbook, of designs, some actually not so bad - tasteful, subtle, a nudge nudge wink wink effect - and some that...Well, didn't exactly leave a lot of room open to guesswork.
He reached over, tapping a finger next to one of the more subtle designs. "That one's not bad."
