Sandbag

Tony Stark meets a recently thawed out Captain America.

He’s staring at the single lit monitor, arms folded across his chest, gaze intent. Beside him Nick Fury stands in smug silence.

“You’re shitting me, right?” Tony Stark says, gaze flicking briefly toward the other man before it goes back to the monitor to fix on the image there. “There’s no way that can actually be…”

“Oh, it’s him, Tony,” Fury says, his tone, as always when he speaks to him, that amused, barely-patient rumble. “The real deal.”

“Good God, he’s fucking gorgeous. And impossible.” His childhood hero come to life. The old pictures didn’t even remotely do him justice and even his brain can’t quite process that at first. “Frozen in sea ice you said? How does that even work?” Fury’s one eye narrows on him.

“Cheating on your girl already, Stark? So I need to warn all my male agents about you now too?”

“Pepper’s way too smart to stick with me. She kicked my ass out after a month. Literally. And she was wearing the new black-patent Jimmy Choos I bought her too, which was all kinds of hot and amazing, if I do say so myself. We’re better as friends-with-tension instead anyway, considering she runs my company now.” His head feels light and his throat raw, as if he’s just downed a shot of Patrón.

He’s babbling. He knows he is. Rhodey would have kicked him in the shin about now, but Rhodey isn’t here. It’s only him and Fury in this overly sci-fi looking black metal office – and really, who does the whole black-glass techno-pipe look these days anyway? – staring at a monitor screen that shows one of the SHIELD gyms and a muscular young blond man in a tight white tee shirt and khaki chinos punching the hell out of what looks like a Kevlar sandbag. And the sandbag is losing.