The Cold of Bare Iron
"I am Iron Man," Tony Fucking Star was quoted as frequently as possible on the evening news. And the midday news. On every news broadcast, actually.
Tony Stark, as many knew, was not hte "superhero type" - something else he'd admitted to that day, which wasn't quoted nearly as often. Nobody cared that he wasn't the type. Scratch that. EVERYBODY cared, that's why he was still on the news, after so many months. And time and time again, they played the same three clips over and over.
1. Catching the car while in the Iron Man suit.
2. The Suit, with owner, flying.
3. Tony's most famous quote.
And still, that was it. No specials on the suit, what it was made of, how it worked. Stark himself had hardly been seen since his little announcement. Rumor was that he was even keeping this from the military, for the time being. Some speculated that it was a selfish act...others thought it was the smartest thing he'd ever done. Most, however, really didn't give a shit if a millionaire-genius built himself a superhero costume.
--
Jess slammed the remote control down in frustration.
"What now, doll?" Dan asked of the blonde-haired woman he had his arm around.
"Nothing new. Tony Stark can build a nearly-indestructable suit in a terrorist's cave, and I can't even so much as come up with a single topic for my class project when I've had a semester and a month to start planning it. It's just...frustrating."
"Yeah," said the slight hint of a New Jersey accent Daniel Crowe still had, after his years in California with Jess. "But Tony Stark has a little more available to him, and had a bit more of an incentive at the time than a passing grade. Besides, he's been brought up doing this sort of thing, you know? The man's a genius: And you're just a grad student," as soon as he'd said it, he knew he'd regret it. "I didn't mean - "
"Yeah, you didn't mean: You'd better not have meant! I spent my whole life around people who 'don't mean to say' I can't do anything, Danny, and after twenty-four years, it's getting a little old. I should be able to do that, I should be given the chance. But have I been? No. Because people see the blonde hair and the big rack (a/n: I can see Danny rolling his eyes in the background now) and the flabby parts that come with the rest of it, and nobody else wants to take a chance on someone who isn't perfectly photogenic or someone who actually had to work to become a genius, who wasn't born a Tony Fucking Stark of the world."
"You're really sexy when you get mad at the world," Danny's defense mechanism kicked in. Luckily it was a tactic he'd found Jessica could never resist - He always managed to calm her down with that - and his slow, dangerous smile that made her melt.
"Oh...Shut up."
"Nope," the corners of his lips were still slightly turned up, even as he moved in to put them against hers. It was almost innocent, until he lingered around for another, and then one more - this last one certainly not small enough to be considered a peck. Another thing he knew got to her, kissing her when she was so mad, a crude diversionary tactic. Crude, but it worked...and she knew it.
"You suck," she muttered, once she remembered she'd been in the middle of a tyrade.
He just pulled her closer to himself there on the couch, kissing all over her face and neck lightly, like she was precious to him, something he cherished.
Well, there went being mad at the world, right out the proverbial window.
--
Nearly two more weeks had passed, getting her that much closer to the college's project deadline, when Dan pulled up to her rented forest-front property in Northern California. Jessie was on the front porch steps, a milky drink in one hand and a piece of paper she was balling up in the other.
As Danny stepped out of the junker truck he drove when his motorcycle - in the bed of the truck on this particular night - was in need of repair, she chucked the balled up failed-idea-on-page at him as hard as she could. Being only paper, though, it landed at his booted feet instead of its intended target: his thick skull.
"No, I'm not fixing that damn thing again," she said, smirking as she shook her head at his dreaded noise-machine, fixer-upper bike. Which she'd made repairs to numerous times, having a way with machines...and mechanics, but that was another story.
"You don't have to, it's not broken," Dan picked up the wad of paper and threw it back at Jess, causing her to hurriedly move her drink - he'd almost made it into her Kahlua, an offense punishable by death.
"Oooh, you're just asking for trouble tonight," she teased. "And that's a first...So why's it in the back of your truck?"
"He was already pulling it out over the tailgate as she asked it.
"Because I couldn't drive both over here at the same time," he rationalized, and she contemplated throwing something more than paper at his head next time, for the smart remark. "And I figure you're gonna want to keep - " a small break in his thought process as his tires hit the pavement below, wrenching the smaller vehicle out " - the truck for a while."
"No thanks, I prefer my Toyota, and besides, I don't work on trucks." This, not surprisingly, got a steady sigh from him.
"Will you get your cute ass over here and look at what your loving boyfriend of years brought you?" he started up that torturously slow smile again.
"Oh, you brought presents, not more work?" she inquired, getting to her feet and moving over next to him and his bike.
"Well...it depends on how much alcohol you've had tonight... I'm kidding!"
"Okay, smartass, what...the hell?" she peered into the bed of the truck. It looked like five other trucks grew legs and brains, mated, and threw up right there. There were some things she recognized, others she didn't. Either way...she had absolutely no idea what he was thinking, bringing her a bunch of greasey, old, used parts.
"Okay, so before you start freaking out thinking I want you to build me a new engine -"
"Talk fast, Romeo."
"You're sleeping with a genius who figured out your final project for you."
"I am? Who is he, I wanna kiss him."
"Well...I've got this mechanical engineering final, and you've got your tech final, right?"
"Uh-huh..." skeptical, to put it mildly.
"So you've got the insides and I've got the body of the beast covered."
"I'm still not getting it, can you speak American and not New Jersey please?"
"We're gonna split a project. I deal with the iron, you make it so that a man can use it."
It took her just another blink to catch on, finally. "Oh my god, you're insane. You've taken one too many skids on that bike of yours, haven't you?"
"No no no no ... look at me, Jessie... We can do this. We're both always talking about how we wanna prove ourselves, well I know the metal and you know the math, we can - "
"But I don't know how arc reactor technology works, I don't know how to make something hover let alone fly, I'm not an airplane mechanic, I definitely don't build missile weapons for a living like Stark does - "
"Yeah yeah yeah, I know that, but I don't give a shit. Listen to me. You're smart, I'm smart, it'll work out. Look at this stuff," he knew how she worked - she had to see what she had available before she could figure out exactly what to do with it, sometimes. He was hoping this was one of those times, at least. "What do you see?"
"I see a bunch of junk that's not gonna make it a foot off the ground no matter what I do with it..." she trailed off, having said that very quickly after he'd turned her towards the truck bed again. A quick sip of her Kahlua and cream, and she moved, using one of the tires to stand on the side of the truck, and take a mental survey of what he had all in there. "This just...it's not gonna do it, Danny. I don't even know where to start with something like this, I mean..."
"You just hang onto these a day or so, it'll come to you. Look, I've got everything here to make two or three cars run, we have to be able to do some sort of...something, with it. Right?"
"Yeah but you can't put a gasoline-powered suit on and expect it to be a good idea."
"You're right, we can't use gas, and neither of us know anything about arc reactors. What else?" He was trying to force the scientist out of her he knew, deep inside, she had in her.
"I ... " she sighed, heavily, and took a large cooling fan in her hand. "We could hook up a battery and a circuitboard..."
"There ya go, see? You're a genius," he climbed up into the bed of the truck and started stepping over the parts in it to get to her. "You're freakin' Einstein, I love you, look at you," he took his hands and put them to each side of her face, starting to kiss her again in that way that meant trouble. "If anyone besides Stark can do this, it's us. Right?"
"No, this is stupid, it's not gonna work, it'll be a miracle if we can get anything besides the metal to do its job," she sulked a bit. Little black raincloud, much?
"What's your favorite color?"
"What? Green, why?"
"Because Iron Man's got red and gold, I'm gonna build you a beautiful green suit to wear."
"Build me a... wait, what? Why do I have to be the one to fly it?"
"You complain about me behind the wheel of something that stays on the ground, if we're gonna make this thing based on what we know about it from the news, do you really want me driving?"
"Good point..." she conceded. He kissed her again, there, before hopping over the side of the truck, and eventually helping her down to the ground.
"It's gonna work, I promise. I have faith in you, I'm giving you that chance you wanted. It's not the most state-of-the-art, but it's here, right in front of you. I trust you can do it," he took her up in his arms again, pulling her against his chest lightly. "Do you trust me enough to believe me, and to have faith in yourself?"
"Not sure yet..." she replied, running her hands through his dark curly hair, that he kept somewhat long-ish, but not quite to his shoulders.
"Well uh...maybe I could, I dunno," his hands went around her hips, pulling them into his a bit, "convince you?" There was that devilish grin again.
"It's gonna take a lot of convincing, Dan," she said it seriously, but smiled back at him.
--