Little Wars ☆ Steve Rogers

09

As he stepped out again into the empty hallway, he called Tony, feeling too impatient to text. Tony answered, "It's a yes or no question, Victory Mail. It requires a one word text in response."

"I'm here," Steve said. "What do you need?"

"Why would you assume I need something from you?" Tony asked. "Seems a little arrogant. Is this about the new documentary series on you?"

"Is there a mission?" Steve pressed. "I'm ready now."

"I think the actor they got is too good looking for the role. Not punchable enough, either, but we'll have to see if he captures the righteousness on screen; I might feel differently then."

"Just tell me what you need," Steve said. "You wouldn't text me unless you needed something."

"You're right. I was gonna ask you to sign my tits."

Steve sighed, jerking open the door to the stairwell. "You wanna talk about the syndicate Nat and Sam were tracking, right? Are you in your lab? I'll come up."

"Yes, but the intern is here, too. And if we talk in front of her, she will almost certainly sell everything we say to a reporter. I think Dum-E might, too."

"Maisie's there?"

"Don't sound so happy about it. And don't get any ideas about signing her tits. I won't allow it!"

The comment shocked Steve to a halt in the middle of a flight of stairs. He didn't think he had old-fashioned sensibilities—no, it definitely wasn't that. He wasn't flustered. He'd reached out and grasped the handrail when he'd paused, but not because he needed it for support. He gripped as hard as it could take, focusing some of the tension out so he wouldn't crush his phone with the other hand.

"Are you there? Are you having a heart attack?" Tony said.

"Can she hear you right now?" Steve asked. "Did she just hear you say that?"

"The intern? She thinks it's funny."

"I doubt that she laughed."

"She communicates her feelings to me through our shared telepathic mind-link. You wouldn't understand."

Steve still hadn't moved. He shifted, facing the wall, moving off the handrail so he wouldn't break it. He pressed his palm flat into the concrete wall instead, half leaning into it.

"Tony, I've had a bad couple of days," Steve said. "If I get up there and you start talking like that, I'm gonna hit you."

"Can you say that again? I'm gonna record it and send it to that actor to rehearse. I want him to really nail the punchability."

"I need to take a walk before I can be around you," Steve said. "I'll be up there once I've cooled off. Don't text me. Don't call me."

He hung up his phone before Tony could say something snarky. And he turned around the other way, descending. He was nearly at the top of the building now. He figured just the walk to the ground floor and back up would be enough.

He stopped again a second later, though, when his phone vibrated once with a text. He took a deep breath, slowly. Then, when that didn't help, he decided to let it wait for a second. In his current electric, frustrated state, he didn't trust himself not to escalate if Tony said something worse.

Descending yet again, he dropped down each step with enough weight to feel the shock of it through his shoes, making his steps a little slower, harder to spring back off of. Could he be certain that had been Tony? He imagined it was Sam or Natasha or Wanda, someone telling him there was a crisis, that he needed to get somewhere because something was burning—he remembered that helpless feeling on the morning of Pearl Harbor, his witnessing through the radio, when the world was so big and he was so fucking small—