Where the Armor Ends

The debriefing room still smelled like smoke and scorched metal. Everyone had tracked in ash; it dusted the edges of the long glass table and settled into the seams of the chairs. JARVIS had already cycled the vents twice, but the metallic tang clung to the throat. Tony leaned back with his boot propped on the table, helmet tucked against his ribs, the curve of it reflecting the fluorescent light. He was still in the suit from the waist down, impatient with the idea of peeling himself out of it just to sit through Fury’s glare.

Steve stood at the opposite end of the table, posture straight like he was bracing for impact. The star on his chest was marred by a streak of black soot; a tear showed at the seam of one shoulder pad. He’d left his shield by the door, a silent accusation Tony saw from the corners of the room—like he hadn’t bothered to carry it further into Tony’s territory.

“You can’t blow a hole through a load-bearing wall in a crowded city and call it a day,” Steve said, voice flat but tight. His eyes hadn’t lost that sharp battlefield focus. “There were civilians inside the adjacent building.”

Tony lifted a brow. “And yet here you are. Alive. You’re welcome.”

“That’s not what this is.”

“No?” He rolled his shoulder, the servos in his arm whirring softly. “Because from where I was flying, it was an A.I.M. stronghold outfitted with enough stolen tech to level six blocks if we let them finish wiring their toy. Going in soft would have gotten us all killed. And I like my friends—most of them. On a good day.”

Steve’s jaw flexed, slow. “Collateral damage isn’t acceptable because it’s efficient.”

“Tell that to the bomb in the basement.” Tony spread a hand, palm up. “I did. It didn’t listen.”

Natasha slouched in a chair midway down the table, watching them with cool eyes and a bruised cheek. Clint stretched, wincing, the quiver at his back clinking. Neither intervened. It was the kind of silence that said they’d seen this before and would again. Fury folded his arms and waited like a storm cloud learning patience.

Steve looked down at the schematic Tony had tossed onto the table—a mess of red highlights and blinking markers. “Your plan was to make a skylight. Through three floors. With civilians evacuating on two.”

Tony adopted a bright tone. “My plan was to make sure A.I.M. didn’t pop their science fair project and turn Midtown into confetti. Which, by the way, we prevented. You’re welcome squared.”

“You ignored the cue to switch to a precision strike.”

“I ignored a cue from a man whose definition of ‘precision’ includes charging a corridor with six hostiles and a machine gun mount.” Tony sat forward, his boot dropping to the floor with a thud. He placed the helmet on the table gently, as if the softness of that one motion would moderate the rest. “I’ve got micro-missiles, a targeting system that could give a neurosurgeon a complex, and a finite energy reserve. I used the tools I had. This is how we win.”

“That’s how we almost lost two bystanders in the stairwell,” Steve said quietly. “You didn’t see them.”

Tony felt the swift, unwanted twinge low in his gut. He’d seen too much already—the flare of light, the heat mapping, the blur of red outlined bodies. “They’re fine,” he said, the words clipped. “They were escorted out. I checked.”

“You checked after you were told,” Steve said, meeting his eyes. “After the fact. You can’t fly solo and expect us to clean up the risk you create.”

“Funny,” Tony said, smile thin. “Last I checked, solo got this team through a portal and back again.”

Steve’s mouth pressed into a line. “I’m not talking about New York.”

“I am always talking about New York,” Tony said, and for a breath, the room contracted around that name and the light through the glass darkened. He shook it off with a practiced flick of his fingers. “Look, Cap, I get it. You like plans that look good on paper. Clean lines, clean conscience. I like my cities not exploding. Sometimes the shortest distance is a straight line through a wall.”

“Sometimes the shortest distance is stepping back and thinking for five seconds.” Steve’s voice frayed on the edge of exasperation. He moved around the end of the table, closer, hands braced on the glass. His knuckles were scraped raw. “You didn’t listen.”

“I listened,” Tony said, soft enough that it startled even himself. Then louder, because quiet sounded like admitting something. “And I made a call. That’s what you hate, isn’t it? That I don’t follow your orders.”

“I hate that you treat our lives like a calculation you can adjust in the air.”

Tony’s eyes flicked down to the smear of soot on Steve’s suit, to the way his chest rose and fell, steady now but not long ago heaving. He tamped down the impulse to say something reckless. “You know what else I can adjust in the air? A countdown. You want me to wait for consensus while a fuse burns.”

“I want you to trust the team.”

Tony huffed out a laugh that wasn’t humor. “I trust the numbers.”

Fury’s chair scraped back with a decisive screech. “Enough,” he said, voice cutting across the table, a blade in velvet. “I’m not interested in listening to you two measure who’s got the better instincts. We lost equipment. We saved a city. Both outcomes are unsatisfactory for different reasons.” He stared at Tony, then at Steve, evenly. “You want precision? You want force? Congratulations. You’re going to get both. Under one roof.”

Tony slouched, theatrically aghast. “Tell me we’re getting a divorce.”

Fury ignored him. “Stark Tower. Six months. Full-time. Training, living, breathing the same recycled air. You will learn to coordinate or you will learn to hate each other more. Either way, you will stop improvising at the expense of the mission.”

Steve’s lashes lowered for a fraction of a second, the only sign the edict hit its mark. He straightened. “Director—”

“Not a negotiation, Rogers.” Fury’s gaze snapped to Tony. “And you. You will get over yourself long enough to remember you’re not the only genius in the room.” He pointed a finger toward the door. “Get out of the suits, wash off the battlefield, and report to your new reality.”

The door hissed open. The room let out a collective breath.

Tony recovered first, because that’s what he was good at—moving, talking, covering the fault lines. He picked up his helmet and slung it against his hip. “Welcome to Hotel Stark,” he said, flashing a grin with too many teeth. “Try the salmon. It’s sustainably sourced from the depths of my freezer.”

Steve didn’t smile. He held Tony’s gaze for one beat longer than necessary, a look that sparked and burned without smoke. “You can make jokes,” he said, voice even. “It doesn’t change what happened out there.”

Tony tapped the arc reactor through his undersuit, a thoughtless gesture that felt like a deflection and a shield. “No,” he said. “It changes what happens next.” He turned on his heel, servos whining, and didn’t look back as he left the room. He didn’t have to. He could feel Steve’s disapproval like a weight between his shoulder blades, heavy and constant, a pressure that promised this was far from over.

The corridor outside the debriefing room was cooler, quieter, like the Tower understood when to swallow sound. Tony stripped out of the gauntlets as he walked, metal unlocking from wrist with practiced clicks. He handed them off to a bot that whirred forward on its little treads like an eager dog and hated how the scene felt domestic.

“Sir,” JARVIS said, voice low enough to thread into Tony’s ear without intruding. “Director Fury has uploaded the residency directive. I’ve integrated the schedule into communal systems.”

“Delete it,” Tony said automatically. “Recycle bin. Then empty the bin. Then throw the bin into the sun.”

A pause—answer enough. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. The Director has root access for this protocol.”

Tony blew out a breath. “Of course he does.” He stopped at the end of the hallway as Steve’s footsteps caught up—steady, unhurried, deliberately non-confrontational. Tony stared at the glass elevator doors as if they were the enemy. He could see both of them reflected, distorted: the messy state of their suits, the distance kept out of sheer stubbornness.

“This isn’t a punishment,” Steve said, coming to stand an arm’s length away. The words sounded like something he was trying out on himself.

“Feels like one,” Tony said lightly. “Six months.” He made a face. “Of me. You might petition the UN for leniency.”

Steve’s fingers flexed at his side, skin tight over scraped knuckles. “It could help,” he said. “If we’re in the same place. If we’re—”

“—tripping over each other’s boundaries? Yes, nothing builds trust like shared bathrooms.” Tony thumbed the elevator call button too hard and regretted the childishness immediately. The doors slid open. He didn’t move.

Steve didn’t either. He kept his gaze forward, toward the empty elevator, as if entering together required an agreement they hadn’t reached. “Look,” he said, lower. “You don’t want this. I’m not thrilled either. But he’s right. We need to learn how to operate together before we’re back in the field.”

Tony tilted his head, hearing the honest thread in Steve’s voice and wishing it didn’t catch. “We already operate together,” he said. “Not my fault you insist on doing it on hard mode.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Neither is life, cupcake.” He stepped into the elevator. The motion tugged at the cut on his side he hadn’t let anyone look at. He braced his hand against the wall and smiled like he couldn’t feel it. “Penthouse,” he said to the air.

Steve didn’t move. He kept watching Tony from the threshold, a hesitation that hummed with unsaid things. His eyes flicked to the edges of the chest piece Tony still wore, to the shadow of bruises under the seam. “You should let Banner check that,” he said.

“Banner is a delight,” Tony said. “I’m going to honor that delight by not bleeding on his shoes.” The elevator waited, patient. Steve didn’t step in. Tony could have told the doors to close. He didn’t.

“Stark Tower’s not a barracks,” Steve said finally. “It’s your home.”

Tony’s mouth twisted. “It’s an address and a series of locks. Don’t read into it.”

“Too late.”

The elevator chimed softly, a reminder. Tony could feel the press of something—decision, maybe—like a hand between his shoulder blades. “You should go stake your claim on your shiny new room,” he said. “I’ll send a concierge bot with mints and a passive-aggressive welcome basket.”

Steve’s mouth almost, not quite, curved. “Save the mints. I’ll settle for a map. This place is a maze.”

“I prefer ‘labyrinth.’ It sounds more intentional.” Tony flicked his gaze down, then up again. “J. Give Rogers a tour. The PG-13 version.”

“Of course, sir,” JARVIS replied. “Captain Rogers, if you’ll proceed to the residential level, I will guide you.”

Steve nodded once, then looked back at Tony as the doors finally started to close. “This doesn’t have to be miserable,” he said.

Tony caught his own reflection slicing through Steve’s in the narrowing gap—two men layered and then separated by glass. “We’ll see,” he said.

The doors sealed the words in. He sagged back against the wall and let his head rest there for half a second, the cool glass holding him in place. Six months. Fury’s timeline was a dare wrapped as a mandate. Part of him flared with the urge to make it impossible—late nights, locked doors, work that ate days. Part of him, traitorous, was already drafting schedules and shared systems, places where they could intersect without colliding.

“Sir,” JARVIS said carefully when the elevator opened on his floor. “A reminder that the Director also expects a training schedule by morning.”

Tony stepped out into the penthouse—the open sweep of glass and the city poured beyond. “Fine. Build a calendar. Color code it. Make it look like I care.”

“You do care,” JARVIS said.

“Don’t psychoanalyze me. That’s what the espresso machine is for.” He dropped the helmet onto a worktable with more force than necessary. It spun once and settled, facing him like it was waiting. He stared back.

Below him, on the resident floor, Steve moved through the hallway like a man in a museum, not touching, cataloging. Tony could pull up the feed. He didn’t. He told himself it was restraint and not curiosity.

He shed the rest of the lower half of the suit with brisk movements, the segmented plates retracting into their chargers. The undersuit clung damp at his spine. He thought of Steve’s voice back there—this doesn’t have to be miserable—and rolled his eyes at the echo of it.

“Draft a memo,” he said. “Team meeting in the morning. Seven a.m. sharp. We’ll christen our new era of togetherness with a calendar and some mutual loathing exercises.”

“Very good, sir.”

He hesitated. “And… add a line item for meals. Communal. Twice a week.” The words felt strange, like testing an old muscle. He scowled at himself. “Make it sound optional.”

“I’ll make it sound appealing,” JARVIS said, inflection almost amused.

“Don’t overdo it.” Tony scrubbed a hand over his face, felt grit scratch his skin, and finally conceded to the pull of the shower. As water pounded heat into his shoulders, he let his eyes close and saw, unhelpfully, a smear of soot on a star and a look across an elevator threshold that had been patient without being forgiving.

Across the Tower, Steve set a canvas bag down on the bed in a room too sleek for him. He unpacked methodically: a few folded shirts, a notebook, a pencil that had been chewed down years ago and kept anyway. He opened the closet and stared at the polished wood, the automatic lights springing to life like applause he didn’t want. He closed it and went to the window instead.

New York was a sound he’d never stop being surprised by. The Tower’s glass softened it into a hum. He pressed his palm to the pane, felt the faint thrum of the building under his skin, like a heartbeat. The city he didn’t belong to, the future he was still learning, a man upstairs who put himself between everyone and the worst possible outcome and then acted like he hadn’t.

JARVIS cleared his artificial throat politely. “Captain Rogers, if you require adjustments to temperature, lighting, or furnishings, I can facilitate.”

“It’s fine,” Steve said. He looked at the couch—sharp lines—and then at the simple chair by the window. He chose the chair. “Can you show me the training floor in the morning?”

“Already scheduled, sir. Seven a.m. Team briefing.”

He huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh. “Of course it is.” He thought of Tony’s flippant tone and the careful hands he’d seen in battle, adjusting a course mid-flight. He wasn’t sure what the next six months would look like. He wasn’t sure what he wanted them to look like. But the thought of seeing a plan they could both stand behind did something quiet to his chest. Something almost like hope and almost like dread.

He sat back, the city humming, the Tower settling around him. Upstairs, Tony toweled water from his hair and typed three lines into a shared schedule: team run, briefing, optional breakfast. He stared at the word optional, then left it. Let Steve decide. Let himself.

Between them, the Tower held its breath. The night stretched toward morning, and the mandate hung over them—unwelcome, inescapable, promising friction that might, finally, turn into something useful. Or something else entirely.

The room greeted him with a hush that felt staged, the lights rising in a smooth gradient as the door sealed behind him. The air smelled faintly like ozone and lemon—clean in a way that didn’t leave room for anyone. The bed was too low to the ground, crisp lines and white sheets that looked like they’d remember every crease. The surfaces were a series of seamless planes, no hardware, no edges to catch on. Everything waited for a voice command he wasn’t sure he’d ever feel comfortable giving.

He set his duffel on the end of the bed and listened to the building. Somewhere above, machinery purred. The walls held the sound out like a courteous stranger. He braced his hands on his hips and took it in, slow. A wall of glass framed the city in high definition. He could see reflections stacked on reflections—his shoulders, the shield case the Tower had installed near the door, the sheen of the floor. It was beautiful. It felt like sleeping in a showroom.

He tugged the zipper of the duffel open and started unpacking because it was the only thing he could do that felt like work. Two pairs of jeans, five shirts, socks and briefs rolled tight. A thin sweater the color of old army blankets. He didn’t own much anymore; you didn’t when the world decided your life had an intermission. He set each item in a drawer that slid open soundlessly, light spilling out in a soft bar. The shirts settled like they were on display. He ran a thumb along the smooth divider. There was no grain to snag, no familiar stick to the slide, nothing to remind his hands of an older rhythm.

At the bottom of the bag, he found the notebook he always carried. Soft black cover, edges frayed. He dropped it on the nightstand and the surface recognized an object, lighting a pale circle around it. He pulled the notebook back like it had burned him. The circle faded. He exhaled and set it down again more deliberately. The circle returned, obedient. He told himself it wasn’t a challenge. He also told himself he wasn’t keeping score tonight.

He moved to the small closet. The door opened for him before he touched it. Automatic lights rose along a rail like a theater cue. Hangers—uniform, curved like the line of a shoulder—waited. He slotted the sweater in, then pulled it back out and folded it instead, leaving the rail mostly empty. The sight of so much space made his stomach dip. He didn’t need to fill it. He didn’t know if he could.

By the window, a single chair sat angled toward the view. He tested it, eased down and let his spine find the back. It didn’t creak. He missed the sound before the thought finished. The city spread out below with the kind of color that only existed at height. He put his palm to the glass. It was cool and smooth. He felt a vibration there, faint as a cat’s purr. The building had a heartbeat. Not his. Not anyone’s he recognized.

He looked at the shield case. Stark had installed it with a kind of deference that sat strange with everything else he did. The shield inside was silent, the star glinting under soft light. Steve crossed and pressed his hand against the glass. The case read his print and opened with a hush, offering the thing that defined him back to him like it belonged to the Tower, not to the man in the room. He lifted it out because it felt wrong not to. The edge settled against his forearm, familiar weight, familiar balance. In the reflection of the window he saw himself holding it—out of place in a place that tried to shape itself to him.

He propped it against the wall instead of returning it to the case, angling it so the star watched the door. A small act of defiance or superstition. He couldn’t tell which.

On the desk—another smooth surface—there was a tablet already logged in for him. JARVIS had left a welcome message and an overlay of settings he could customize. He stared at the icons, at the suggestions: preferred wake time, preferred temperature, environmental soundscapes. He scrolled with the pad of his thumb and stopped on a selection labeled City at Night. He tapped it. The room filled with a low wash—traffic, a siren far away, the rumble of a subway. It wasn’t the right city, not the one lodged under his skin, but it was closer than the clean silence that made his teeth ache. He left it playing, the volume low.

His hand strayed back to the notebook. He flipped it open to a blank page and held the pencil, worn down to his grip, between his fingers. The graphite came away on his skin like it always did. He made a few lines—a habit, not a drawing—and tried to shape how the room should feel. He thought of the apartment in Brooklyn he used to have, the paint chipped at the baseboards, the window that stuck in summer, the way sound seeped in and layered on top of itself until it felt like a blanket. He thought of a chipped mug on a windowsill and the way wood warmed under a palm. He couldn’t put that here with lines and smudges, but the act of trying calmed something restless in him.

He stood and crossed to the bed. He pulled back the corner of the sheets, expecting the fight of tight corners and hospital corners. They yielded easily, breathless. He sat on the edge and bounced once. Firm, unyielding. He smiled without meaning to. Some things didn’t change.

The bathroom light rose when he stepped through. The mirror passed its smooth glow over him, searching his face, counting freckles he’d forgotten. He ran water and cupped his hands, splashing his neck, letting the heat creep into shoulder knots that had set up camp after the fight. He watched himself in the mirror not because he liked to, but because it grounded him. Here was a body that had survived. Here were hands that remembered, despite the bright precision around him.

He dried off with a towel that felt unused and folded it neatly on the counter. Back in the room, he turned the temperature down two degrees. The air answered immediately. He resisted the urge to apologize to the machine for making it work.

He moved the chair an inch closer to the window. Then another inch. He dragged the wastebasket from under the desk to beside the nightstand. He took the tablet and slid it into the drawer under the bed, shutting it away from his immediate reach. He left the notebook and pencil on top.

When he turned off the lights, the city remained, a spill of color and pulse that reached up and pressed against the glass. He slid under the sheets and listened to the soundscape that wasn’t his but tried to be. The hum of the Tower layered over it, not unfriendly, just unfamiliar. He let his eyes trace the faint outline of the shield in the dark and felt his chest loosen, a small release. Tomorrow would come too soon and full of demands. Tonight, he would teach the room his breath and let it learn him back, one quiet hour at a time.

The elevator doors parted to his floor like a curtain rise, and the bass hit him before the air did. Tony told the system to turn it up another notch because obvious wasn’t loud enough tonight. Synths spilled into the hall and rolled into the lab, drowning the last comments from Fury he hadn’t asked to remember. If the Tower was supposed to become a summer camp for extraordinary adults, then he was the kid who snuck out to the machine shop.

Holograms shot up from the central table as soon as he stepped in. His suit bled into pieces on the display—shoulder assemblies, gauntlet overlays, the arc housing like a living gear. He touched two fingers to the air and dragged the left thigh plate wide, letting the CAD internals bloom like a flower and then split down to bolts. The damage report tallied along the side. Microfractures from the A.I.M. charge. Heat stress on the knee piston he’d welded in a hurry yesterday. He scrolled past the notes that suggested he should rest.

“JARVIS,” he said, peeling out of the jacket he’d half-ruined with soot and somebody else’s blood, “pull the Mark Seven impact data. Overlay it with the last four EGRET runs. Cross-reference with… no, you know what? Just give me the failure spikes and tell me where I’m stupid.”

“Importing.” JARVIS’s tone was serene, unfazed by the music. It felt like an anchor thrown into deep water. “You are not stupid, sir. You are, however, pushing a thruster assembly beyond recommended tolerance. Again.”

“Add it to my memorial plaque.” He stripped down to the T-shirt, wiped a smear from the chest with a clean corner, and threw the jacket at a chair that dodged it by scooting an inch. “Okay, not stupid. Just stubborn. I can live with stubborn.”

He stepped into the circular platform and spread his arms. The gantry recognized him, irised open, and lowered a crate of components like an offering. He snapped a gauntlet ring into a brace and began to solder under the clean, staring gaze of the lab’s lights. The iron hissed against the new alloy and a sting of metal hit the back of his tongue. It tasted like focus. He turned up the track again. The drum line made his shoulder roll settle.

He worked until the first flush of adrenaline burned to a steady line. One plate became two, became a re-seated hinge. He chased a bug in the timing algorithm that had almost let an A.I.M. trooper tag him at close range. He chased it because it was easier than chasing Fury’s decree, easier than the image of Steve, dry voice, jaw set, talking about collateral damage like Tony didn’t keep a running count. Like he didn’t see every crumpled car and blown windowpane.

JARVIS slid the requested overlay into his periphery. He flicked a glance at the graphs and scowled when the spikes lined up exactly where he knew they would. “All right,” he muttered. “We build it smarter. We build it like it wants to be handled by an idiot.”

“You are designing it for yourself, sir.”

“Touché.” His hands moved on their own. He swapped a coil. He tightened a screw and loosened three more. He kept talking because the alternative was quiet. “Fury thinks corralling everyone here is going to teach us to hold hands. Rogers thinks we should salute the concept. You think I’m dramatic. I think I’m right.”

“I do not think you are dramatic. I think you are expressive.”

He snorted, surprising himself. The sound pulled at something tight in his chest and the tightness didn’t break. “Expressive. Put that on the plaque, too.”

A projection bloomed beside him, showing the suit’s torso rotating, layers peeling back to the arc housing. He reached out and held his palm under the image, feeling the phantom warmth of it. All the chatter on the comms blipped back through his mind—his own voice layered over the fight, the bark of orders, the flat calm he used when panic might make him sloppy. He could hear Steve even when he didn’t want to. Stark, right. Left flank. Hold. Tony justified to the empty room that it wasn’t the voice that stuck, just the way there had been no hesitation when the suit went down for a second and Rogers slid into the gap without asking.

He turned the projection off with a flick that felt more like a shove. The table cleared. The music didn’t. He leaned over the bench and dug out a set of microservos he’d been saving for a different problem. “New problem now,” he told them. “Congratulations.”

The seconds blurred. He reworked the knee piston like it had insulted his mother, swapping the composite, double-sleeving the joint. He thought about the way Steve had bristled when he’d said sometimes you had to break a few eggs. He thought about the eggs. The city had a way of breaking itself without help. He’d grown up learning that lesson from the man who’d built half its bones. He tightened the pistons with deliberate care and tried not to hear a Brooklyn accent in his head telling him to slow down.

The lab pinged. He ignored it. When it pinged again, he barked at it. “No. Tell whoever it is I’m busy teaching my legs to not explode.”

“It is not whoever, sir. It is you. A reminder you set to establish a communal meal schedule.”

Tony let his head fall forward until his forehead rested against his wrist. He could picture the calendar invite in his mind, the empty boxes, the way it would feel to populate them with people who weren’t going to show up. A crack of something small slid through the armor of his irritation. He told himself it was hunger. “Delete it.”

“Are you certain? Captain Rogers—”

“Delete it.” He made the J crisp. He didn’t want to unpack the reason. JARVIS, trained to the edge of his moods, cut the alert. The silence left behind by that specific ping pushed at his ribs in a different way than the music. He rolled his shoulders. “We’ll do a team meal when we’re not all actively pretending to like each other.”

“You do not dislike them.”

“I dislike being scheduled.” He went back to work, because work made sense. The bench lamp warmed his knuckles. He flexed them and watched the tendons move like cables, felt the slight tremor he pretended he couldn’t feel. He had a spare reactor humming in a stand across the room, a low thrum that threaded through his skin, steady as his own pulse. He set the newly refit knee on the testing rig and told JARVIS to start the cycle.

Metal stroked against metal, smooth, steady. He watched it, arms folded, until the graph rose and held. No spike. No fracture. A small satisfaction slid into place. He allowed it. He picked up a thin strip of plating and ran it between his fingers, the edge fine enough to shave his breath. “Better,” he said softly, mostly to the room. “We can do better.”

He didn’t look at the elevator, but he felt the Tower like he always did, like a living thing that listened. If he let himself, he could feel the floors below—the training room stacked with equipment, the empty kitchen, the corridor where anyone could walk in and try to talk. He pictured Steve finding his way through that much glass and choosing the chair, not the couch. He pictured him with a blanket he wouldn’t admit to needing. He shook it off and turned to the gauntlets.

He dialed the music back a little as his concentration narrowed. He nested sensors, recalibrated the haptic feedback translation, and set the suit to receive a software push once he finished integrating the rebuilds. He rolled his neck until it popped. The clock slid past midnight without asking permission, then past one.

“Status on the external antennae?” he asked, and it was really a status on everything that wasn’t in this room.

“Nominal. The Tower is secure.”

“Good.” He scrubbed a hand over his face and stared at the helmet perched on its stand. His reflection stared back across a split visor. The eyes were dark. “We’ll keep it that way.”

JARVIS didn’t answer. The lab held him, the way a good machine did. He pulled the helmet close, thumbed the edge where the gold met the red, and set it back. One more hour, he promised no one. Maybe two. He could sleep when the buzzing in his head matched the hum of the reactor. He could meet the morning with something that might keep the team alive. He could pretend it wasn’t about the way Steve had said his name in the field like it meant ground.

He bent back over the work. The soldering iron bloomed to life. The music was a wall he could lean against. The rest of the Tower could wait outside of it.

He lost track of the song rotation. The edge of fatigue sharpened his focus instead of blunting it, the way it always did when the lab was empty and the city pressed its face to the windows. He swapped out the soldering iron for a torque driver and eased a housing closed, listening for the soft seated click that said the new fit was true. It was. He exhaled and let his eyes close for two seconds, just long enough for the afterimage of the HUD to float up behind his lids.

It wasn’t peace. It was an arrangement. He could live with that.

“Sir,” JARVIS said, voice pitched lower to slip beneath the music. “One more matter before you continue to stress your carpal joints.”

Tony didn’t look up. “Is it about the tower’s air intake filters, because I swear I replaced—”

“Captain Rogers has made several attempts to establish a communal meal schedule for the team,” JARVIS said, almost apologetic. “He submitted a calendar grid and proposed alternating responsibilities for preparation and clean-up. He also suggested—”

There it was, the dull ache that showed its teeth when he forgot to brace. Tony snorted, kept his hand steady around the driver. “Of course he did. Did he include a chore wheel? Gold star system? Hand-lettered pledge to clean up after ourselves and respect quiet hours?”

“He included a rotating roster,” JARVIS said. “And a note that he is open to feedback.”

Tony twisted the driver a quarter-turn. The screw settled. “Feedback: we don’t eat together. We graze, we forget, we consume the blood of our enemies. Tell him to add that to the menu.”

“You asked me to relay requests that required your approval.”

“I asked you to filter out the noise,” he corrected, setting the driver down harder than he meant to. “I am a benevolent dictator, J. The kind who knows that scheduling a communal meal is a beautiful path to everyone showing up late and pretending they brought something while they microwave leftovers.”

“So you would like me to decline.”

He dragged his thumb over the lip of the gauntlet base, checked the sensor alignment with a fingertip and a glance. It was perfect, which irritated him for a reason he didn’t want to name. “I’d like you to delete it.”

“Sir—”

“Delete it,” he repeated, flat, before the small thing could become a larger thing with edges. He didn’t want to see the grid. He didn’t want to picture a table with chairs pulled out and a bowl of something in the center, or the way silence might knot between people who fought together and then didn’t know what to say with their hands. He didn’t want to imagine Steve waiting at six o’clock with food he’d cooked like it was a skill he hadn’t lost.

“Very well.” JARVIS’s pause lasted a breath. “Request deleted.”

A small, cool hum filled the place where the alert had been. Tony reached for the software updates on the glass and flicked them through the projected armor as if they’d always been the goal. “Thank you. Next time, auto-sanitize anything that sounds like ‘communal’ or ‘mandatory fun.’”

“I will… do my best,” JARVIS said diplomatically.

“Your best is excellent. Gold stars all around,” Tony said, letting the edge curl into his tone again, because it was easier than the other thing. He wiped a clean cloth over the gauntlet’s faceplate ring until the smear lifted and there was nothing left but his own reflection, warped around the curve. “Put it on my calendar: never.”

“Noted.”

He set the gauntlet down in its cradle and rolled his stool back with one foot, annoying every muscle along his spine. The lab’s lights were kind. They didn’t show the gray at his temples any more than he let them. Outside, the air traffic blinked a pattern low over the river. His stomach twisted on an empty line, and he told it he’d earned that.

“Status check on the Mark Seven boot recalibration,” he said, because the best fix for a thought was another thought.

“Seventy-eight percent complete,” JARVIS replied. “And may I add that Captain Rogers—”

“You may not,” he cut in, then softened it with a faint exhale. He didn’t have to be cruel to be clear. He could choose not to be anything at all. “Tomorrow, maybe. We can revisit the concept of meals when everyone stops trying to pick the same fight in different rooms.”

There was a brief electronic hush that felt like agreement. Or judgment. Or just circuits resting.

He stretched his fingers, listened to the soft pop in his knuckles. The helmet looked back at him from its stand with blank eyes that had been all kinds of things today—angry, sharp, frightened, amused. He stood, letting the stool skitter away, and crossed to the coffee machine he kept next to the diagnostics suite for nights exactly like this. He poured the last inch from the carafe and didn’t grimace at the taste. It was fuel. It did the job.

“Send a system-wide note,” he said without turning, “that the training room’s schedule will be updated in the morning, and that anyone who sets foot in my lab tonight will be drafted into manual inventory.”

“Compose message?” JARVIS asked.

“Don’t compose. Threaten. Nicely.” He swallowed, put the cup down. “And J? If Rogers sends another invite, you can—”

“Delete it,” JARVIS finished, gentle as a hand at the small of the back. “Understood.”

He didn’t answer. He picked up the gauntlet again, hefted it, felt the weight distribute just right across his palm. His mouth tugged into something that wasn’t a smile but wasn’t far. The music had dropped to a bassline that felt like a heartbeat. He eased into the next task with the same care he gave the ones that mattered.

Outside the lab’s glass wall, the Tower’s corridors were quiet. Somewhere on a floor he never meant to think about, a calendar grid winked out, leaving blank squares, open time, no obligations.

Inside, Tony adjusted a wire, and the arc reactor in the corner hummed, steady and blue. He stacked focus on top of focus, the way he knew how, and let the night close over him like a door.