Too Obvious to See // MARVEL // STONY

1.11 what the heck are teraflops? a new kind of crocs?

Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people. - Steve Jobs

TONY STARK and Bruce Banner were in Bruce's lab. Bruce was busy hovering a device over the shining blue jewel in Loki's scepter. Tony was typing things on a screen. Both were busy trying to analyse everything while at the same time doing new discoveries. Something only the two of them were able to do.

'The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports of the Tesseract,' Bruce said while putting away his device. 'But it's going to take weeks to process.'

'If we bypass their mainframe and direct route to the Homer cluster we can clock this at around 600 teraflops,' Tony responded. He stopped whatever he was doing and walked over to Bruce.

'All I packed was a toothbrush,' Bruce casually told him. Tony chuckled.

'You know, you should come by Stark Tower sometime. Top ten floors, all R&D. You'd love it. It's Candy Land.'

Let's be Tony here, shall we? Tony is the guy to push people to the edge off a cliff and make a stupid joke, just so he could see their reaction. He'd be an ambulance worker who arrived on a crime scene and asked the guy with the broken arm if he needed a hand just to see how bad the situation was. He wouldn't do it to annoy people, he just wanted to know who or what he was dealing with. So that's why he casually grabbed a screwdriver while walking over to Bruce.

'Thanks,' Bruce said. Tony walked over to his left, 'but the last time I was in New York I kind of broke Harlem,'

'Well, I promise a stress-free environment. No tension, no surprises.'

'Ow!'

'Hey!'

Both the just poked doctor as well as the billionaire turned around to see Steve coming in the lab. Tony turned back to Bruce.

'Nothing?' he asked slightly disappointed.

Steve came walking to the two men. 'Are you nuts?'

'Jury's out,' Tony simply responded, but quickly focused on Bruce again. 'You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz, bongo drums, huge bag of weed?'

'Is everything a joke to you?' Steve asked, desperately trying to gain Tony's attention.

'Funny things are.'

Steve wasn't amused. 'Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny,' Steve told him. He quickly realised his mistake. 'No offence, Doc.'

'It's alright,' Bruce assured him. 'I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things.'

Tony walked around the table to Steve. 'You're tip-toeing, big man. You need to strut.'

'And you need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark.'

Tony now looked into Steve's bright blue eyes. Steve noticed how suddenly Tony's mask fell off. There was vulnerability under the cold brown eyes. There was warmth hidden. It was a wave of emotions that needed to be let out. Tony did this with thought. Steve knew that. There was something going on.

'Do you think I'm not?' Tony told Steve, putting his mask on again. 'Why did Fury call us in? Why now, why not before? What isn't he telling us?' Steve thought for a second. 'I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables.'

'You think Fury's hiding something?' Steve asked more than he stated it.

Tony had a serious expression on his face. 'He's a spy. Captain, he's "the" spy. His secrets have secrets.' Out of nowhere he held a little bag of blueberries in his hand, eating some. 'It's bugging him, too. Isn't it?'

Bruce clearly felt uncomfortable by getting dragged into the conversation. 'Uh... I just want to finish my work here, and...'

'Doctor?' Steve interrupted. Bruce sighed and looked up while he took his glasses off.

'"A warm light for all mankind." Loki's jab at Fury about the Cube,' Bruce referred to when Loki talked to Nick in his cell.

Steve nodded. 'I heard it.'

'I think that was meant for you,' Bruce continued, now looking at Tony. Tony offered him some blueberries which he thankfully accepted. 'Even if Barton didn't tell Loki about the tower, it was still all over the news.'

'The Stark Tower?' Steve asked. 'That big building in New York?'

'It's powered by an arc reactor, a self-sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for, what, a year?' Bruce explained.

'It's just the prototype.' Tony turned to Steve again. 'I'm kind of the only name in clean energy now. That's what he's getting at.'

'So,' Bruce interrupted him, 'why didn't S.H.I.E.L.D. bring him in on the Tesseract project? What are they doing in the energy business in the first place?'

There fell a short silence. 'I should probably look into that once my decryption program finishes breaking into all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secure files,' Tony casually said.

Steve looked up at the billionaire. 'I'm sorry. Did you say-'

'Jarvis has been running it since I hit the bridge,' Tony interrupted the blond. 'In a few hours, I'll know every dirty secret S.H.I.E.L.D. has ever tried to hide. Blueberry?'

Steve ignored the offer and looked straight into Tony's eyes. Tony might be right about the fact that Nick was hiding something, which wasn't even for certain anyway, but breaking the trust of the leader of your team seemed wrong to Steve. That's not how a team worked. A team should always work together. Both wining and losing was something you did together.

'Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around,' Steve told Tony, showing him what his thoughts were.

Tony wasn't affected by the words. 'An intelligence organisation that fears intelligence? Historically, not awesome.' And he had a fair point there.

Steve still didn't want to agree with Tony. 'I think Loki's trying to wind us up,' he shared the theory with the men. 'This is a man who means to start a war, and if we don't stay focused, he'll succeed. We have orders. We should follow them.'

'Following's not really my style.'

Steve felt his heart drop. Tony could've said anything and he might've agreed with him. But this comment was just wicked. A team was about relying on each other, being there for each other, being able to trust them. A team was about working together. Not about witty remarks or, as Tony here said, style.

'And you're all about style, aren't you?' Steve asked Tony, desperately needing him to prove him wrong.

'Of all the people in this room,' Tony proved him wrong, 'which one is, A, wearing a sprangly outfit, and, B, not of use?'

'Steve,' Bruce said, ignoring the billionaire. 'Tell me none of this smells a little funky to you.'

It was quiet for a moment. Tony knew Steve questioned Nick too.

'Just find the Cube,' Steve commanded and walked away. The men went back to work and Steve walked out of the room. Tony saw him walking the opposite direction of what he came from and smiled by himself. 

He knew it would work.