A/N: Were you waiting for some action?
Cerulean St. Cloud, Part 2
"Doesn't look like they stepped on the earpiece on purpose," Clint reported, as Steve's beating continued.
Tony would hope not. He had designed it to look like a bit of earwax with a hair caught in it. Not very appetizing to study. It lay flat, not filling the ear like more obvious earpieces. Microscopic fibers let it cling to the inside of the ear like Velcro, but it couldn't cling too tight or you'd lose skin taking it out.
Speaking of lost skin, Tony winced as a punch opened a cut in Steve's cheek.
The attackers had developed a routine. First a flurry of blows from the henchmen, then a pause while Markham or Jinks would try to reason with their prisoner. Cap took the opportunity to bluster, or question, or seem to waver, anything that prolonged the assault to give Natasha more time.
Tony knew that Sitwell probably knew the names, rap sheets and favorite ice cream flavors of the five henchmen, but the billionaire didn't bother to ask. He classified the men in his own idiosyncratic fashion. The two well-dressed goons were the ones holding onto Steve's arms. One was Hispanic and one looked Italian, but their dark hair and olive skin made them practically twins. Even their clothing was similar. Only their neckties were different, so Tony thought of them as Green Tie and Blue Tie.
The man behind Steve, who was dressed as a waiter, did more dancing than hitting but he did a disproportionate amount of damage. His blows were savage and landed when Steve was distracted by the others, so Cap couldn't brace himself. Tony marked him as Kidney Buster.
The other "waiter" was the one who knocked the earpiece flying. An ugly man with his head shaved bald, he seemed to hate Steve's handsome face and focused on pounding it. He was Facelifter.
The guy dressed as a bartender concentrated on pounding Steve's body. After a few hits to the chest, which seemed to hurt his hand, he pulled out a pair of brass knuckles and moved his attention to the softer belly area. Tony dubbed him Knuckles and hated him.
Watching the men assault his friend, Tony's fists clenched and he realized he was unconsciously moving his fingers in the pattern to fire his repulsors. It was second nature, now. If he saw someone hit an Avenger, he'd fly down and blast them.
Though his eyes were on the monitor, Sitwell noticed the twitching. He gestured at a bank of readouts, one of which looked remarkably like an EKG.
"I know it looks bad, but he's not in any danger. We have sensors all over that room. The captain's heart rate is still steady."
Tony ran his hand down his face. He remembered that Clint and Natasha trusted Sitwell. They said Sitwell had been a good friend of Coulson and Stark still obscurely felt he owed Coulson a debt, so he didn't unleash his sarcasm flamethrower on the mission handler.
"Agent Sitwell, you've been chasing down Chitauri technology and bringing in Loki's scattered minions. You haven't had much opportunity to work with the Avengers, have you?"
Sitwell agreed. A worry line appeared between his eyes. Phil had always told him when Stark got reasonable, danger was imminent.
"You wouldn't know, for instance, that Rogers has been taking yoga lessons from Banner. Amusing to watch. You wouldn't think a big guy would be so flexible, but — well — super soldier and all. Even his cartilage is enhanced, I suppose."
Sitwell read between the rambling lines. "So he might be able to keep his heartbeat under control, even if he's being seriously hurt."
Watching the monitors, they saw Steve spit on the floor at Jinks' feet. Steve knew he'd lost his earpiece. The gesture of defiance was Steve's attempt to reassure the watchers that he was still good to go. But the blood in the saliva was anything but reassuring. Maybe it was just from a split lip or a bloody nose (Steve visibly had both), but it could have come from an internal hemorrhage as well.
Tony continued with a semblance of calm, "Also, Cap can take a punch better than most. His muscles are dense and he heals rapidly — but he feels everything! He's a stoic by nature, but he feels pain like the rest of us, maybe worse because drugs don't do anything for him."
Sitwell's eyes grew narrow in the expression Tony had come to know as "Bad intel detected. SHIELD agent recalculating."
Tony pulled up his sleeve and showed his bracelet. "Let me call the suit. Just in case."
Sitwell hesitated. "We didn't want to make this an Avengers case." No splashy superheroes, just a quiet spy game.
"They already know Stark was there," Clint's voice said coolly from his vantage point. "If he noticed something and brought in Iron Man, that wouldn't be so strange. He's a meddler, everyone knows that."
"Pernicious meddler," Tony corrected cheerfully.
Sitwell nodded agreement (to calling the suit, though he agreed with the meddler designation, too). "Try not to attract too much attention, Mr. Stark."
Tony spoke to his wrist. "J, send the Mark VIII. Stealth over speed."
"Yes sir," said a tiny, tinny British voice from the wristband.
"Nice to have backup," Clint commented. "But it might not be needed. Cap knows how to ride a blow. These guys aren't doing as much damage as they think they are."
Sitwell and Stark trusted Hawkeye's observations and the next incident in the beatdown room seemed to back him up.
Markham called a pause, telling "Kevin" to stop being stupid. "How much more do you want to take, kid?"
Steve brought up his head and lifted his jaw, which, not incidentally, put his eyes on line with SHIELD's hidden camera. He seemed to look Tony squarely in the eye when he answered, his split lip showing a twitch of humor as if he remembered a private joke, "I can do this all day."
As the henchmen began swinging again, Jinks pulled Markham aside. Out of "Kevin's" earshot (but not out of Cap's range or the SHIELD microphone's), Jinks suggested bringing in Cerulean to use her as leverage.
"They're coming, Romanoff," Sitwell warned.
"Let them come. I've got it." Her voice was triumphant.
"Everything?" Sitwell asked hopefully.
"Everything," she confirmed. "Sending the data now."
"No need to let these fish swim away," Clint chortled.
"No need to be gentle taking them down," Tony smirked, cracking his knuckles.
"But Cap and I get first dibs," Black Widow warned.
"Ladies first," Sitwell said.
"No, captains first," she answered. "He's earned it. More than earned it."
Tony remembered that Natasha was a specialist in this sort of interrogation. Let the bad guys capture her, beat her, maybe torture her, until she had learned everything she needed to know just from the questions they asked and the boasting they did. She understood exactly what Cap was going through, even though she couldn't see it.
-AV-
Natasha left the office through a door to the outside hall, then let herself back in the main door of the penthouse suite, munching on a bag of M&Ms from the vending machine near the elevator.
"Where have you been?" Jinks growled.
"I was hungry," "Cerulean" answered with a shrug. "You need me?"
"Yeah, your boyfriend is stubborn and we're getting bored. You know what to do."
"Sure, cry and cower and beg Kevin to tell you what you want to know."
"We may have to push you around some," Jinks warned her.
She shrugged. "Just stay away from the face or it'll cost extra."
Jinks nodded. "Fair enough." But Natasha didn't trust the sadistic gleam in his eyes.
While Natasha mussed her hair and ripped her beautiful cerulean dress down at the neck and up clear to her hip, the SHIELD strike team picked up their weapons and checked their gear.
"Talon's ready," Hawkeye reported from his rooftop.
Tony smiled because he and Clint had designed the window-buster together. The talon had four needlepointed, diamond-tipped claws and as heavy a shaft as was aerodynamically feasible. The points could penetrate even bulletproof glass and had enough weight behind them to shatter a window and rip away any concealing curtains.
A metallic rap came at the door of SHIELD's temporary command post. The strike team agents reached for their weapons, but Tony waved them back.
"Take it easy, boys and girls. It's for me." His wristband was flickering green as he opened the door.
The Iron Man suit stood there, eye slits glowing in its shadowed face. Tony stepped backwards to make space and turned away from the suit. The suit stepped into the room, closed the door behind it and opened like a cannibalistic clam to engulf Tony body part by body part.
"Like that's not creepy at all," one of the agents muttered.
Tony smirked. "Don't wait for me, children. I'll be right behind you."
"Won't be anything left when we get there anyway," another agent grumbled, as the strike team filed out double-time.
"Not with Widow on the loose," a woman agreed.
Jinks slapped Natasha hard and threw her at Steve's attackers. Knuckles yanked her long blonde hair and wrenched back her head; then he punched her in the face with his brass knuckles and threw her at Steve's feet. When the woman looked up to see Steve's handsome face battered and bleeding, Cerulean shrieked, Natasha winced in sympathy and Black Widow clenched her teeth in icy fury.
Steve Rogers looked down at his friend's face, cheek cut and swelling from the wicked blow. Steve, Kevin and Cap were all incensed.
"Kevin, baby, don't let them hurt me. Please, I just want to go home," Cerulean sobbed.
"Go home" were the key words.
Natasha saw a gleam in Steve's swollen eyes, then the battered face drooped in surrender. "Don't hurt her," Steve said hoarsely. "I'll do whatever you want."
"Damn! We should have done this sooner," Jinks said.
"But the beatdown is your favorite part," Markham pointed out.
Jinks' answering smile turned to a puzzled frown when Natasha said in her Black Widow voice, "Your favorite part? Then you're going to love this!"
A former circus performer, Clint knew a cue when he heard one. He loosed the Talon.
The bad guys flinched when the window smashed and the stylish wooden blinds tore loose to fall in a clattering tangle.
In that moment of distraction, Steve Rogers shrugged.
The simple shift of his serum-enhanced muscles pulled the guys holding him off balance. Blue Tie stumbled and lost his grip on Steve's right arm. Ignoring Green Tie, still hanging on his left arm, Steve began pounding the goon in front of him, the one who'd been so fond of gut punches, the one who'd hit Natasha. Steve's big fist moved like a piston — wham, wham, wham! Head, gut and groin in rapid succession. As Knuckles folded, his jaw came into perfect alignment for a massive uppercut that hit with the force of a cannonball. There was a crunch, as of multiple bones breaking, and then the man dropped to the floor.
Blue Tie stumbled right into Natasha's path. It was his incredible good fortune that she was focused on the henchman Tony called Facelifter, the man who'd turned Captain America's wholesome visage into hamburger meat. She shoved Blue Tie aside as she reached for two of the ikebana vases. Wielding the heavy glass vases like cudgels, she slammed one into Facelifter's face and broke the other over the crown of his bald head. Blood poured from a dozen cuts. Facelifter covered his bleeding face with his hands and cried like a frightened child. Natasha sneered and landed a kick behind his ear that dropped him unconscious to the ground just an instant behind Knuckles unmoving body.
Green Tie tugged at Steve's arm, trying to turn him to hit him, but Steve ignored him momentarily, looking for Markham and Jinks.
Natasha spotted Jinks first, bounding after him like a cheetah.
Behind Steve, the Kidney Buster had recovered from his shock and pulled a pistol from his waistband. An arrow pierced his gun hand, pinning it to the wall. With a scream of agony, he let the gun fall and grabbed for the arrow. A second shaft pinned the second hand beside the first. He writhed and wailed for a full second, until a blunt tipped arrow knocked him out and shut him up.
The artistically ripped dress had freed Natasha's nimble legs. She leaped onto the leather couch, using the arm as a springboard to vault over Jinks' head with a laid out, half turn that landed her on her feet, facing the racketeer.
"I warned you, hitting me in the face would cost extra," she growled. "Nick Burke's three orphaned little girls. That's only the first page of your debt ledger."
"The only debts that matter are the ones I pay in blood," Jinks snarled back.
A knife flashed in his hand and he lunged at Natasha. She laughed and sprang clear, chopping the blade out of his hand as he passed, then she leapfrogged to his shoulders almost playfully. She squeezed her knees together, pressing tight beneath his chin. Jinks clawed at her bare leg, tearing the shreds of her skirt off, but Natasha ignored it.
"Time to pay up," she hissed.
She threw herself backwards without releasing the pressure of her knees. The Black Widow heard a satisfying crack, then let go, doing a handspring to her feet as Jinks' body dropped.
Steve spotted Markham running for the exit, just as Green Tie grabbed Steve's collar, trying in vain to knock the super soldier down. With a huff of annoyance, Steve seized the knot of the green tie, clamped his hand around the henchman's leather belt and hoisted the man over his head. Green Tie clutched frantically at Steve, but only managed to tear his shirt.
Steve eyed Markham, but noticed a greater threat when Blue Tie pressed his luck too far and grabbed an assault rifle from behind the bar. Putting his back, arms and mighty legs into the effort, Steve threw the flailing green-tied goon clear across the room into his blue-tied counterpart. The men collided and slammed into the wall behind the bar, shelves of liquor bottles crashing and smashing down upon them. The air was filled with the sharp scent of alcohol.
Escape in his grasp, Markham reached for the door. It blew straight backwards into him, blasted off its hinges by a repulsor blast. Markham landed flat on his back, moaning beneath the door. Iron Man walked in, crossing the door and the man beneath it with deliberately heavy tread.
Standing on his tilted platform, Iron Man scanned the room. Only his two Avengers teammates were still standing, two well-built chests heaving in a most attractive fashion (no matter what your preference). Steve's dress shirt had been half torn off by Green Tie's frantic grip. Natasha's cocktail dress looked more like a low-cut one-piece swimsuit. Blood and glass was scattered everywhere and the place reeked of expensive booze.
Tony Stark flipped up his visor. "You started the party without me," he complained.
Steve gave a laugh that turned into a groan. He clutched his abused abdomen and folded toward the floor, but Iron Man was there in a flash, catching him before he could face plant in the bloody glass.
"Don't make me laugh," Steve pleaded breathlessly. "It hurts when I laugh."
"I knew that was an old joke, but that old? Really?" Tony said.
Steve laughed again, and groaned again, leaning on Iron Man's shoulder. Tony hoisted his friend into his arms, which wasn't easy, armor or no armor, when Steve was curled into a tight ball of pain.
"At least calling the suit wasn't a total waste," Tony commented.
To Be Continued
A/N: And there's the whump. One more chapter to come.