They landed the quinjet at Stark Towers, and Tony was just preparing to go work his mission nerves away in his workshop, when he was grabbed by the shoulder. When he saw that Rogers was the one who had grabbed him, he resolutely kept his faceplate shut.

"Hawkeye could have gotten killed because of you ignoring orders, Iron Man!", he all but shouted. Tony sighed, the sound coming off strangely metallic through the suit.

"Hawkeye can handle himself, but civilians would have died if I hadn't ignored your orders", Tony said, looking straight into Cap's azure eyes.

"Stop fighting", came Fury's exasperated voice over the com. Cap let go of Tony, reluctantly, and Tony chose that moment to fly away, straight into his workshop.

He waited for the armor to become disassembled and then looked around his workshop. For once, he actually didn't have any ongoing projects.

"What do you say about adding a few floors to the tower, J?", he asked, picking up a pen which he twiddled around his fingers.

"A bad idea, sir. You are not the only one living here now, renovating could cause inconvenience for the other Avengers", JARVIS answered, disapprovingly. Tony threw the pen back onto the table. It was during times like these he wished he hadn't decided to end his relationship with Pepper, even though he knew it was for the best. He had tried to make JARVIS as human-like as possible, but sometimes he just needed to hear what he wanted to hear, and asking JARVIS for advice wouldn't give him that. On second thought, Pepper probably wouldn't tell him what he wanted to hear either.

"You're just no fun", Tony mumbled to JARVIS, who didn't answer.


Tony was taking the elevator down to the kitchen, when it stopped a few floors up, opening the doors to reveal Cap standing there. He actually seemed to debate whether to get into the elevator with Tony, or to run away, but after a second of careful consideration, he stepped in next to Tony without saying a word.

The elevator continued its descent, and suddenly lurched to a halt again, this time with the emergency light blinking red.

"What the...", Tony said smashing a button on the panel.
"Sir, there is a power outage. I am working on it, the elevator will be back to functioning shortly", JARVIS said and that actually got Tony worried.

"Power outage? That isn't supposed to happen", he said, sending a quick text to Natasha, telling her to check the circuit panels in the basement. Maybe there was an attack going on.

"Stark, what is happening?", Cap asked, surprisingly sounding slightly... afraid.

"I don't know", Tony answered truthfully. "We might actually be under attack", he said, unlocking his phone when he heard the sound indicating a text. Nat confirmed his suspicions; some of the wires had been cut. He told Steve.

"Your entire house runs on technology, shouldn't you have those cords a bit more hidden?", he asked, sounding enraged. Tony turned to look at him.

"They are very well hidden, thank you very much! The only reason Nat is able to get to them is because JARVIS let her, and because I gave her the pass codes. Yes, codes in plural. There are eight codes! And JARVIS is keeping the place under constant surveillance. Is that safe enough for you?", Tony said, angered that a guy who came from the forties dared to question his ability to keep his tech safe. Steve actually looked away, cheeks reddened.

"Sorry", he mumbled and Tony almost fell over in surprise. He waited for an explanation, which came hesitantly.
"I just... I'm not too fond of being stuck in small, enclosed spaces. It can make me kinda irrational", he said looking embarrassed. Tony didn't blame him though, he knew how terrible experiences could affect someone. His heartbeat skyrocketed as his mind briefly went to the cave in Afghanistan, and to the hole through the sky created by the Tesseract. He almost shook his head to try to remove the events from his head. Meanwhile, Steve looked at him, concerned.

"I understand",Tony said, pushing at his eyelids with the heels of his hands to try to gain composure. Great, now Cap would see him as a rude piece of shit, AND a maniac. He felt a hand on his shoulder, much gentler than before and he opened his eyes to see Steve looking at him.

"Are you all right?", he asked, looking very concerned. Tony laughed shakily.

"Yeah, I just remembered some shit", he said, trying to smile, but probably failing.

"If you need to talk...", Steve said, tentatively. Tony shook his head no.

"It's okay. I'm working on it, slowly but surely", he said, feeling that he had already told Cap too much about what was going on in his head. Even Bruce didn't know about this. Steve nodded, taking his hand off of Tony's shoulder. Suddenly, the elevator lurched, and, with a metallic groan, it started up again. As soon as the doors opened, Tony made a mad dash for the basement. JARVIS informed him that there was nothing on the security cameras to indicate that someone had been to the basement, but the cut wires were glaring proof that someone had stopped the elevator deliberately.

"I think someone trapped us in the elevator as a decoy. All the Avengers would try to get us out, and we would be trapped. Meanwhile they could be off robbing a bank", Steve said, coming up behind Tony to look at the wires. Not that he understood any of it. Tony turned around to raise a disbelieving eyebrow at him.

"So you think the people who did this", he gestured to the circuit panel. "Are wreaking havoc down in Times Square or somewhere?".

"There have been no reported attacks or robberies that match the time frame of the elevator incident, sir", JARVIS proclaimed. Tony scratched his beard thoughtfully.

"Who and why, then?", he murmured, walking back to the door, Steve following closely behind.

"Maybe just some low-level criminal wanting to mess with you?", he suggested, and Tony snorted loudly.

"Right, because getting past my security system is sooo easy", he said, amused when he glanced over and saw that Cap had gotten red with anger.

"That wasn't what I meant", he murmured. They reached the ground floor where Natasha waited for them.

"Did you find anything?", she asked, knowing full well from searching the basement just a few minutes earlier that there was no trace to be found.

"No", Tony said, shortly. He pushed past Natasha to go to his workshop. He had had far too much unpleasant interaction with his teammates for one day.


Later that evening, Nat visited Tony in his workshop. Tony hadn't given her the pass code, but he wasn't surprised when she managed to sneak in anyway.

"Have you fixed my batons yet? Fury wants me and Clint to go on a mission", she said, leaning against Tony's desk. Tony grunted affirmatively and gestured towards her weapons in the mess at the table, too busy with calculations to speak. Natasha walked up to him and forcefully turned his head to make him look at her. Tony was about to fall into a tirade of curse words when she interrupted him.

"Do we need to be worried about the presumed break in in the basement?", she asked, sounding all assassin-y. Tony sighed and pursed his lips angrily.

"Probably not, since the only thing they did was cut the power to the elevator", he said, wondering why the hell everyone were getting so worked up over that tiny little incident. For all they knew, it could even have been a rat chewing at wires, although that was highly unlikely.

"I'm amazed you and Cap didn't manage to kill each other while being stuck in there", she laughed while grabbing her batons. The only reason Tony snarl at her for having fun at his expense was because she could be downright scary when provoked. Thankfully, she left him alone to continue working on... what was he working on again? He looked at the numbers floating in front of him but his train of thought was completely gone. To his annoyance, Steve chose that moment to lightly knock on the glass door. The engineer refrained from lunging a chair at him as he let him in. Steve was holding the coffee machine from the kitchen.

"It's broken", he said with a grim face, carefully handing it over to Tony as if it were a beloved, dead, pet. In Tony's eyes, it almost was.

"You killed the coffee machine", he said, coldly. It wasn't a question, because he didn't even care who was responsible for breaking it; the horrible fact that is was broken still remained. His conscience, who sounded strangely much like Pepper, babbled something about not shooting the messenger, but Tony didn't care. He carefully put the machine down at the table and stood up.

"I didn't...", Steve started, but was interrupted by a punch to the face. The force of it made him stagger backwards, and Tony watched as a bruise started forming on his jaw. He knew it would be gone before the day was over, but seeing it calmed his rage somewhat. Steve looked at him in horror.

"You're suspended from the team", he said, clearly struggling to keep his voice calm. Tony wasn't surprised, he had known this would happen sooner or later.

"I'm pretty sure you'll have to talk to Fury about that, before deciding", he said, looking Steve straight in the eye.

"I'm pretty sure he'll agree with me", Steve spat out and left. Tony sat down again, head in his hands.

"Remind me, J, why do I act before I think?", he asked.

"Miss Romanoff's evaluation of you described you as volatile, among other things, sir".

"She might be onto something there", Tony muttered and started working on the coffee machine.