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Rodney's driving down the 405 when it happens—maybe fifteen cars in front of him, an explosion of noise and metal that arcs down to crash into the asphalt and force hundreds of drivers, already tense from navigating their way through L.A., to slam on their brakes and lean on their horns. His rental car grinds to a halt in a squeak of brakes which convinces Rodney that there's no way the company's been maintaining it properly, but there's little time for him to worry about the possibility of vehicular manslaughter when the probability of it is just a couple of hundred yards away.
He peers through the windshield, desperately disoriented for the thirty seconds or so it takes for his tired eyes to parse the confusion in front of him into something intelligible. He's well aware that what passes for normal in Los Angeles would make people look askance in at least two galaxies, but no one is looking at this apparition with bored, urban affectation: it looks like an enormous robot, a steampunk vision of anarchy, all dull metal and ponderous movements. Its hands are rending apart concrete and metal as if they were paper, and all around him Rodney can hear the screams of people trying their best to get out of their cars and off the freeway, to get away. It's a good idea, because even this far away, Rodney can sense a wave of heat rolling towards him, warm enough to make him remember being on the Daedalus when it had flirted way too close with the power of Lantea's sun, but instead he clambers out of the driver's seat, wrestling impatiently with the seat-belt, so that he can get a better view.
Curiosity overpowers self-preservation with him about as frequently as a misguided sense of heroism does with John—because darting around the robot, smaller and brighter in the glow of stalled cars' headlights, there's another figure. This one is only as tall as a man, but sleek and almost alien-looking, long lines of red and gold. Rodney squints; it's almost alien-looking, but not quite, because he's worked with everything from Ancient to Goa'uld, and this doesn't look like something which could have been crafted by either. In fact, the design has all the hallmarks of...
His mouth thins, and he considers while he watches first one, then the other, of the figures shoot off into the unnatural sodium glare of a Los Angeles night. The speed of them, the power, the ingenuity it would have taken to craft either one— Rodney waits til they vanish from sight, then scrambles back into the passenger seat to grab his cell phone, hits speed dial 1 and barks at Walter until he agrees to put Rodney straight through to General Landry.
Landry yells at Rodney, Rodney yells at Landry, and when, a couple of hundred feet to the right of him, a Stark Industries compound goes up with a noise like the heart of thunder, and a light show like the birth of stars, Rodney yelps, "Jesus Christ! I fucking knew it!" and has to spend fifteen minutes trying not to apologise to Landry for using obscenities.
****
Rodney spends two hours total on the phone with the SGC, getting approval from them and the IOA to offer Stark a disgustingly large amount of money for whatever technology it was that Rodney had just seen unleashed; a further three hours waiting for rescue crews to clear the road enough for him to drive away, grumbling to himself about the too-short life of phone batteries that aren't powered on naquadah and the probability of hypoglycaemia when all he had in the car was a half-eaten In and Out Burger, a bottle of Dr Pepper and a half-eaten box of Krispy Kremes; and another hour and a half fighting his way back through the tailbacks of traffic to get to his hotel.
By the time he staggers into his room and collapses onto the bed, it's after four in the morning, and between travel, a day spent berating his so-called academic peers for their stupid, stupid idiocy at a conference which hadn't even had the decency to provide a proper buffet, and a night spent, oh yes, watching super-powered robots battle one another on a Los Angeles freeway, he's kind of beat.
Before he lets himself sleep, Rodney has just enough presence of mind to stretch out with one hand and snag the phone from the bedside table. He taps in the number he'd memorised before leaving the SGC, and has only to wait for the length of two rings before he hears a drowsy, cranky voice say, "Wha'?"
"Military reflexes?" Rodney asks. "Don't they require you to be a little more, I don't know, alert right away?"
"Shut up, McKay," John replies, and there's a brief pause and a rustle of sheets which Rodney would bet is him turning over to check the time. "You mind telling me why you're calling me at five in the morning?"
"Four, Pacific time," Rodney says automatically, "But whatever, no, I'm just calling to tell you that I won't be getting back to Colorado today, so you're going to have to introduce Ronon to the joys of miniature golfing without me."
"This couldn't have waited?"
"No," Rodney says, "no, no, no, this is big, you see, this could potentially be very big and very huge and very cool, and I am going to have to be there very, very early in the morning to be first."
There's a pause. "Are you high?" John says suspiciously.
"Absolutely not!" Rodney says indignantly. "Well, adrenaline and endorphins, maybe, there might be analogous effects if your blood levels get high enough, I'd have to check with Keller, or at least Google, and after what happened tonight, well, I definitely, definitely think that—"
"Rodney," John breaks in, "Breathe. Focus."
"Oh. Oh, okay, yes. Well, suffice it to say: Robots. Giant robots."
"Robots?" John repeats, and Rodney can hear him perk up even over the crackle of the line.
"Giant robots," he confirms, "With lasers and weapons and they can fly. I'm totally going to try to get us one."
"Lasers? Awesome," John breathes.
"Lasers! Awesome," Rodney parrots back happily. "Okay, good night, try not to let Ronon or Teyla use the clubs as offensive weapons." He tosses the phone off the bed, kicks off his shoes, and is asleep between one breath and the next, relying on the power napping skills he acquired in grad school and honed in Atlantis to give him enough energy to see him through the morning, to let him see Tony again.
****
Of course, staggering bleary-eyed into Stark Industries Headquarters next morning, clutching an extra-strong venti Americano in a vice-like grip, Rodney walks right into a rather uproarious press conference and realises that he might just have put two and two together and come up with five. Okay, four and a half, because he was totally right about this all coming from Stark, but it turns out that what he thought were robots were actually two guys in souped-up body armour—one of whom was actually Tony Stark himself. Huh.
Huh. Possibly not as cool as your own personal death-robot, but somehow he doesn't think John's going to object too much—not if the suit would let him fly.
Rodney stands at the back of the room, relishing the fact that for once, he's not the one causing all the uproar and threatened law suits, and watches it all unfold. He's kept up with Stark over the years, of course, telling himself that it was no more than simple curiosity at seeing the path his own life could have taken, if he'd wanted it to: followed Stark's progress from MIT's newest golden boy to an industrialist with more money than God; seen his face on the covers of magazines, his words lauded as gospel in some of the more fawning technology magazines, his reputation earn him equal parts scorn, jealousy and admiration in every geek forum online. He has no trouble in recognising him—that head of dark hair, that air that said Stark could easily look sleek and professional if only he gave a damn; he'd know them anywhere—but Rodney looks anyway, cataloguing with his own eyes all the changes the last twenty years have wrought on that face. More wrinkles; more lines; a mouth that's still mobile and compressed by turns, that can use words to cut and to placate in equal measure.
Rodney wonders if Stark will be able to see the same changes in his face when he catches sight of him, but he doesn't have to wonder for long. The press conference gets progressively rowdier, journalists clamouring to be heard, and soon Stark's military minders have to line up to push them back and to hustle Stark out of the room. Someone in a colonel's uniform hisses angrily into Stark's ear as they pass by, there are three others of similar rank from other branches of the military walking behind them, looking like they're just waiting to be out of earshot of the reporters so that they can yell too, and Rodney can see the exact moment when Stark recognises him.
Rodney's chin comes up, an instinctive acknowledgement and a challenge, exactly the kind of gesture that had got them started in Bern all those years ago, and Stark arches an eyebrow. He murmurs at the woman walking next to him, who detaches herself from the quickly-moving entourage and makes her way over to Rodney. She's got long, red hair and towers over him in high-heeled shoes that would make Sam Carter wince and Vala Mal Doran grin; she quietly radiates an air of complete faith in her own authority, and when she asks Rodney to follow her, he does as he is bid without a murmur.
Ms Potts, as she introduces herself—and Rodney's read about her: undergrad in economics from MIT, MBA from Harvard, has managed to refute every smutty rumour about her and Stark with a catty remark delivered so demurely people tend to feel bad for ever suggesting the possibility—leads him up a flight of glass stairs, along a wide hallway, and then into a wood-panelled elevator that opens into a large office with a view of the wide plain of the Los Angeles cityscape which Rodney knows must have cost millions to gain.
Stark is sitting behind his desk when they walk in, tie loosened and head propped on one hand while he scrolls through something on his computer screen. He looks bored, though every phone in the room seems to be ringing, a cacophony of sound that's added to by three men in USAF uniforms, and one guy in a suit so badly tailored that he has to be private security, all yelling at once.
Potts manages to get them all outside in under five minutes, exuding a kind of determined competence that makes Rodney wonder if she's maybe a distant cousin of Elizabeth's, before tapping a couple of keys on a tablet computer the size of a Blackberry which results in a sudden, blissful cessation of all phone noise.
"Oh, thank god," Rodney says into the sudden silence.
Potts and Stark ignore him: Potts saying, "Please tell me you're working to fix what you started out there"; Stark replying, "No, I'm checking Facebook. You would not believe how many friend requests I've gotten in the last half hour. These profile pictures are really something else, and I do not speak as a man without exper—"
Potts reaches across his desk and turns off his computer screen. "You have a conference call with the Joint Chiefs and the President in an hour, NATO's convening a special summit to decide what to do with you, and the UN Secretary General asked me to tell you that he isn't happy."
"Well," Stark says expansively, leaning back in his desk chair, "If Ban isn't happy with me..."
The expression on her face is vaguely reproving, one eyebrow arched, and she gathers up a handful of manila folders before she clicks her way over to the door. "You have fifty-five minutes with Dr McKay," she says over her shoulder, "No longer."
"Didn't take me that long the last time," Stark, and the sharp sound the door makes as it closes only seems to make his grin broader.
It's only with Potts gone that he turns to look at Rodney for the first time. "She likes me anyway," he says, in a tone of mock-confidence, "At least, I'm pretty sure she likes me. Or she likes my pay cheques. Or forging my signature on her pay cheques, whichever." He gestures at the free chair in front of his desk, something which looks both very expensive yet uncomfortably orthopaedic, like all the worst aspects of Ancient design turned to profit. Rodney has the sneaking suspicion that it was bought on the recommendation of one of those charlatans who proclaim that putting your opponent into a low, awkward seat will make them feel inferior and subordinate and give you the immediate advantage. Rodney thinks that's bullshit; there's absolutely no disadvantage to be gained from sitting in one of those chairs.
None whatsoever.
"Thanks," he says, feeling his chin tilt upwards, and his fingers work, thumb rubbing nervously against index finger, "but I think I'll stand."
Stark looks at him for a long moment. "So, McKay," he says, "long time no see. Are you going to tell me you just happened to be in town and wanted to look me up, or are you actually going to cut to the chase?"
"Well," Rodney says, "I did happen to be in town last night, driving along and minding my own business when a certain someone just happened to smash into the freeway right in front of me. Someone wearing a suit of body armour capable of independent flight. Ring any bells, hmm?"
"Vaguely," Stark says, feigning deep thought and gazing up at the ceiling as if to seek inspiration there.
Rodney rolls his eyes but tries to repress a snort, remembering what Landry had told him about at least trying to feign tact and diplomacy. "Okay, right, I will cut to the chase. I've been empowered by the Air Force to offer you a chance to—well, I can't say what exactly it is that I've been empowered to offer you until you sign this one little nondisclosure agreement? But trust me when I say—"
Stark has stood and moved over to pour himself a glass of something amber-coloured from a decanter that stands on a nearby table. He doesn't offer Rodney a drink, but the shot he sloshes into the cut-glass tumbler is a large enough measure for two. "McKay," he interrupts. "Rodney—I can still call you Rodney, right? First, I don't trust anyone in this world except for Pepper and Rhodey, and I mean that quite literally—I don't even trust myself—and secondly, I am done dealing with any branch of the US military, I don't care how much money they're offering me."
"Don't trust me, then," Rodney says, spreading his hands wide, "but at least remember that I? Am very, very smart, and if I tell you that we could use your abilities on something bigger than you can even conceive of, then it's, it's... well, it's pretty big," he finishes, somewhat lamely. In fairness, it's not as if he's ever claimed that PR is one of his gifts.
Stark knocks back a mouthful of his drink. "Listen," he says, "I'm all about the bright and shiny new experiences—I've got several dozen tabloids, twenty totalled sports cars and a billion dollar metal suit to back me up—but given that the heads of government of pretty much every world power are on hold right now because of what happened last night, and given that a miniaturised arc reactor is all that's keeping me alive right now? I don't think I want anything bigger than this."
Rodney's fingers twitch. He knows he shouldn't ask—personal boundaries, getting off track, possibly Landry and Sam will yell at him, but what the hell, this is the kind of thing both of them have been working on for half their lives—and since he's probably not going to be able to talk Stark around, and since Stark's got what is essentially a baby ZPM in his chest, hell yes, he's going to ask. "Can I see?" he says, "The arc reactor. You managed to negate the feedback loop using the equipment you had in a cave in Afghanistan? How did you—scaling down the equations never resolved into—"
Stark sighs, but there's a spark of something in his eyes, of the enthusiasm for breaking the universe apart and building it back up again that had first drawn Rodney to him at that long-ago conference. "You can look, but don't touch," he says, tugging his tie loose and undoing the top three buttons on his shirt.
Rodney ignores the instruction, of course, marvelling at the fact that the power of a sun entire can be trapped in such a small space, can be harnessed to the immense task of keeping just one human heart beating, and touches his fingertips to the rounded metal, scarcely warmer than the smooth skin that surrounds it. "Huh," he says, and means wow, and yes, and tell me how you did that, mind already spinning to thoughts of the possible configurations that could make this work, much as it had that first time he'd stepped through the 'gate and into the curved glass wonder of Atlantis.
By the time Potts comes back in, exactly fifty-five minutes after she'd left, the two of them are standing in front of a whiteboard that had been stashed away in a small room just off the office; Rodney's got green sharpie on his cheek and is back to calling him Tony, and Tony's suit jacket has been tossed aside, his shirt sleeves rolled up as he rubs out part of Rodney's equations and scrawls symbols to fill in the ellipses.
"See?" Tony says, "Just like that."
Rodney licks at his lips, thinks of the ZPM casings lying in a locked room back in Atlantis, the empty ones that they'd not yet figured out how to refill, and sees the beginning of the solution written out there in front of him in five lines, his math mixing with Tony's, and all of it so elegantly simple, so beautiful that it makes his heart hurt.
"The President is on line one," Potts says, slipping a bulging manila folder onto Tony's desk, "and the Secretary General is waiting for you."
"Line two?" Tony says hopefully.
"No, outside," Potts says, nodding towards the ante-room which lies off the main door into the room. "I don't think I've ever seen him this angry before."
"I don't think I've ever seen him angry before," Tony says, buttoning his still-gaping shirt back up and sitting back down at his desk. "The man's like a walking warning for the side effects of combining Valium with UN bureaucracy." His hand hovers over the phone, and that must be some sort of signal, because now Potts is placing one hand just under Rodney's elbow, and steering him gently towards the door.
"Hey," Rodney says over his shoulder, protesting, "I didn't even get to make my pitch! I had this whole PowerPoint presentation and everything."
"He wouldn't have said yes anyway, Dr McKay," Potts says, opening the door with her free hand.
"I'll have you know I can be very persuasive," Rodney says, affronted, because he's been a key figure in several interplanetary negotiations by now, or at the very least has been in the same room as ongoing interplanetary negotiations and not caused them to fall apart, "In fact I—"
"Rodney," Tony interrupts.
Rodney twists around to look at him. "Yes?"
"I wouldn't have said yes." His tone carries that same slightly distant amusement that it always does, but underneath it is the certainty and the will that had helped Tony keep Stark Industries at the very top of the Fortune 500, and maybe even a hint of something that could almost be affection.
"Oh," Rodney says, "Oh. Okay, well—"
The door closes gently but firmly behind him, and Rodney feels his shoulders sag slightly with the weight of his disappointment. He's already imagining the special humiliation of explaining to Landry that, despite all of his much-vaunted past friendship with Tony, he hadn't managed to get him to so much as listen to what Rodney had to say about the kinds of technology he could be using; not to mention the look on John's face when Rodney has to tell him that there's not going to be a flying robot after all.
****
Rodney heads back to the hotel, packs up his stuff in the traditional McKay family manner—that is, bundles dirty clothes up with clean and shoves them into his suitcase along with all of the impractically small little soaps and toiletries from the bathroom—and drives his rental back to LAX. He's missed the flight he was booked in on, but he has a USAF-authorised credit card, and he's picked up enough military slang over the years that he manages to cow the guy behind the counter, barely out of his teens and with a shock of carrot red hair, into thinking that he's Air Force brass who needs to get back to base right this instant, for something that's hugely important for the safety of home, country, and Mom's apple pie.
By the time he's walking away towards security with his carry on in one hand and his boarding pass for the next flight to Colorado Springs in the other, the kid's all but standing up and saluting him, and Rodney is losing the battle against the smirk that wants to spread across his face. Sometimes, it's too easy, but it's never not awesome.
He makes it all the way to his gate and commandeers one of those bolted down seats that have clearly never even heard of the concept of ergonomic design—settling in with the strongest coffee that the Starbucks concession could supply because he needs the caffeine, and a copy of New Scientist because he needs the laugh—when his cell phone rings. Rodney blinks, considers for a moment, and then digs it out of the pocket of his jeans. He stares at it for a moment.
Yeah, still ringing.
And yeah, still turned off.
He flips it open.
"Hello?" If this is Sheppard trying to prank call him again using a ridiculous European accent because the mini golf lessons haven't gone well... well, Rodney definitely isn't going to fall for it this time. He's on the alert.
"Dr McKay." It's Potts, her voice taut and distracted; Rodney sits up straighter. "In about thirty seconds, two employees of Stark Industries are going to find you. Co-operate with them, do what they tell you, and go where they tell you."
Rodney blinks again. He's far more used to being the one giving the orders than taking them, but that's the tone of voice that brooks no argument, the one that has been known to make grown Marines run for the hills when Teyla uses it while smiling pleasantly. "Tony?" he asks, knowing that there could be no other reason why she's calling him.
"Quickly," she says. The line goes dead, and then there are two tall men in dark suits standing in front of him, regarding him impassively from behind identical pairs of dark sunglasses and asking if he is Dr McKay.
Rodney had imagined that maybe there'd be a car out front, ready to speed him back to Stark Industries, but instead they lead him at a quick march through the airport and out to a helipad where a sleek and vibrating chopper is waiting for them. Rodney clambers in and straps himself down, clutching at the edge of his seat with both hands and praying for the ride to end even while he knows that John would love this; praying that when they get wherever they're going, Tony will be standing there ready to greet him.
They don't head for the downtown skyscraper, but swing out along the coast towards Malibu, circling around a mansion clinging precariously to a rocky outcropping before landing on its roof. Potts is there waiting for them, her hair haloed bright and tangled around her head thanks to the chopper's still-whirling blades.
Rodney ducks out of the helicopter and runs low across the roof to meet her, yelling to be heard over the noise of the slowly-idling engine and squinting against the dust and the sand that's being kicked up, a haze in the bright sunshine. "You mind telling me what—"
"Tony," she says, leading him towards a doorway and down a flight of stairs; her voice sounds strangely strangled, choked, and her shoes clack and clatter on the steps, "decided that working on the suit would be a productive thing to do while in the middle of a temper tantrum. A temper tantrum bad enough that he pissed off JARVIS—"
"Jarvis?"
"JARVIS. Tony's pet name for the AI that runs his personal servers. Think HAL, only an even lamer acronym."
Overhead, the lights flicker briefly. Rodney glances up, unnerved; it feels like one of those moments when Atlantis does something—opens a door, reveals some treasure—which makes him think that there might just be some kind of intelligence lurking in there that they've not unlocked yet, but Potts only snorts. "Hush, you know it's true."
"And now JARVIS is sulking," Potts says, the tap of her feet becoming a rapid staccato as they reach a corridor which stretches away from the foot of the stairs to what looks suspiciously like a blast bay door with a retinal scanner on the wall next to it to allow for access. "This is normally the point where I'd call in Rhodey, but I don't think is really his area of expertise. Which means there is no one and nothing else around with the ability to help him when he decides that it's a good idea to experiment on himself except for—"
"Except for me," Rodney finishes, resigned. He's grown used to being the go-to person on Atlantis not just for the times when fire is raining down on them from the sky—when it seems as if the rest of his life can be measured only in the space of heartbeats, the time it takes for adrenaline to make his heart stutter and then start again—but also for the times when a group of over-educated people get together and do really incredibly stupid things. Like, say, think it's fun to blow up some of the toilets and no, he's really not over that yet.
The doors slide open, and Rodney blinks because for a moment it seems as if he's reliving that night, when he'd learned just how much damage an Ancient lavatory could do when turned into a projectile and hurled at force through stained glass windows. There's a huge hole in the ceiling, rubble everywhere, and if there had been an explosion in here, he doesn't think that anyone could have—
Potts must see something on his face because she shakes her head. "Previously on Tony Stark's House of Fun," she says dryly. "He's done something entirely different this time."
Rodney follows her through what he sees is a combination research lab and garage, the space filled with things that look either very experimental or very fast or both. The urge to stop, to rummage, to take things apart, is immense, but it fades when he sees why he was brought here. He realises very quickly why Potts had sounded so anxious on the phone, so close to real upset—Tony is sitting in a high-backed chair in the far corner of the room, a seat that looks like a cross between an Ancient control chair and a dentist's seat, and he's shaking constantly, continuously, his head bowed and his arms curled in on his chest. It looks like he's in the middle of an endless epileptic fit.
"What the—" Rodney snaps his fingers at Potts while he runs over to the chair, wondering if it will be safe to touch Tony or if that'll just make it worse. "Ambulance, 911, now, I think you've forgotten that the 'Doctor' is an honorific and—"
"You think Cedar-Sinai is going to be able to help him?" Potts says, "Because somehow I—"
"Yes, yes." Rodney rubs at his forehead with one hand; many and varied as his areas of expertise are, possible acquired brain injuries aren't one of them, and this close he can hear Tony whimpering, low and constant at the back of his throat like he's in constant pain. "Tell me what he did."
"I don't know the specifics," she replies. "But he was talking about possibly integrating the suit into his nervous system, making it more responsive. There are plans here." With a swipe of her hand over a blocky plinth a couple of steps away, she calls up the schematics which Tony must have been using most recently: interactive holograms, Rodney sees, virtual plans of the suit's design interspersed with scrolling blocks of code, a new grammar to it that Rodney doesn't know, but he can parse the syntax and—
"The idiot," he snaps, stepping forward so he can peer at it more closely, run his fingers along five lines of coding that Tony had highlighted and is vaguely thrilled when they pop out from the rest of the text and are magnified, responsive to his closer attention. He reads them through one more time, snorts, rolls his eyes, then goes rummaging through the detritus on one of the work benches nearby. "He can build an arc reactor in a cave in Afghanistan, but he doesn't have an Allen k— aha."
He pounces on it, then turns back to Tony, who is still shaking, though he's managed to get his head back to rest against the back of the chair; even if he can't speak, the look in his eyes says that he's pissed, and while Rodney knows that he shouldn't act all smug towards a guy who's going through multiple seizures a minute, he can't help himself.
"Here," he tells Potts, "hold him back against the chair like that, keep his arms away, try to hold him as steady as you can. Seriously, I mean it, this is finicky work."
She does as he says without question, though she tilts her head at him. She must have picked up from the shift in his body language, the slight relaxation of the line of his shoulders, that it's not as serious as he thought it was at first—or rather, that it is serious, but that he knows how to go about solving it.
"I'm sure you're familiar with Windows, Ms Potts," Rodney says, panting a little as he helps tug Tony's body to just the right angle for him to work on. "Or rather, you're familiar with Windows' Blue Screen of Death? Tony here took a leaf out of Bill Gates' coding manual."
Rodney's fairly sure that if Tony could speak right now, he'd be using language foul enough to make even John's eyebrows rise, and he knows from experience that that takes some doing. "He tried to mesh his nervous system with the suit's sensors, messed up the coding in a way that would have made the designers of Windows NT proud, and now his central nervous system keeps trying to reboot, for lack of a better term. Which, as I'm sure you can imagine, his brain isn't happy with."
"I'm sure," Potts says dryly. She stands and watches, chewing on her lower lip, while Rodney runs the tip of one finger along the seam of skin that's formed where the arc reactor fits into Tony's chest. It's oddly cool, maybe a degree or so below Tony's body temperature, chilled by the physics of a machine that can pull together energy from the place that made the heart of stars. He finds the spot, and pulls gently, and there's a click as the reactor slides out of his socket just far enough, the barest inch that Rodney needs to work.
He fits the tiny Allen key into the slot by feel, not by sight, tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth in concentration, because in its own way, this is as dangerous and as unknown a thing as working with a charged ZPM. It's not like there's much chance that the reactor could blow up if he turns the reset key the wrong way, but, well, it's a miniaturised nuclear reactor. There'd be a pretty sizeable crater from here to Venice Beach. Rodney twists to the right, feels a slight give and release, and then pulls it out as the arc reactor flickers out for just a second, before glowing steadily blue once more.
"Reset button," Rodney tells Potts with satisfaction as the shaking slowly fades away and Tony starts heaving in huge gulps of air, each exhale accompanied by a string of language foul enough to make Rodney wonder if Tony's not spending some time with Marines as well as with members of the USAF.
"You're welcome," Rodney says tartly when Tony's recovered enough to glare directly at him and tailor his expletives to encompass not just the universe in general, but Rodney in particular. "Really, no problem for me to come all the way back here to save your ass from your shoddy coding."
"Son of a—"
"Ah ah!" Rodney says, holding up an index finger as punctuation, "No need to thank me, really. The look of gratitude on your face is enough."
"This looks like gratitude to you?" Tony spits, trying to haul himself upright on arms that are trembling now with simple exhaustion. It's the kind of anger Rodney recognises all too well, an anger that comes from embarrassment at the self turned outwards. "Pepper, you mind telling me why you thought it was a good idea to call him, I could have fixed it myself—"
Rodney rocks back on his heels. "I seem to recall a similar level of swearing accompanying that last time we met in Bern? And that was definitely gratitude."
Tony narrows his eyes. "That was not gratitude, that was—"
Rodney tilts his head back to look at the ceiling, deep in mock thought. "If I recall correctly—and believe me, I nearly always do—that time pressed up against the picture window in that penthouse? It went something like yes, god, please McKay, harder, more, yes, like that, like that." He makes his voice as bland as he possibly can when remembering that long weekend, both of them drunk on ruinously expensive champagne, the heady feeling of making a conference full of academics with decades more experience than them look like idiots, and the sheer joy of being twenty and brilliant.
Tony flushes, and next to him, Potts chokes, but waves him away when Rodney belatedly remembers that perhaps that's not the most appropriate thing to have said in front of someone who, you know, he's only just met. "Believe me," she says, "That's not even the worst thing I've read about him on the internet, let alone the worst thing I know he's done."
"Please," Tony says, managing to stand upright, hands outstretched just a little to help him keep his balance, "I've told you a million times that Perez Hilton is full of—"
"And yet," Potts says, looking like butter wouldn't melt, "I'm pretty sure that the feather thing is true."
"I'd believe it," Rodney says mildly.
"You are such a little shit," Tony says, in a voice just as calculatedly mild.
"Why thank you," Rodney replies, because he is rather proud of his ability to rile people up—it's an ability that's taken him decades to perfect, and irritating someone as infuriating as Tony Stark is probably the finest testament he could achieve—and Potts chokes back a laugh as she walks away.
"Pepper," Tony says, rubbing one hand over his chest, "My chest has an owie. Don't I pay you to stay around and play doctors and nurses with me in my hour of need?"
Potts reaches a door in the far wall, where pieces of plywood have been nailed over the walls —where windows once were, Rodney assumes, thanks to the glass which lies around it for several feet in a shattered constellation — and beneath the line of her expensively tailored jacket, her shoulders shrug expansively. "I think I'm paid to go upstairs and explain to the team of medics and helicopter pilots on stand-by that Mr Stark is doing just fine and that their services won't be needed."
Tony grins. "Ah, but your bonus—"
"—means that the lie I make up to explain what just happened won't involve tales of teenage Russian gymnasts and aspersions on the size of your manhood." She shoots a sunny grin at them over her shoulder, all teeth and promises, and then disappears up the stairs, her heels crunching on broken glass, the line of her back very straight.
When she's gone, Rodney looks at Tony. Tony looks at Rodney. Both of them clear their throat at the same time, and Rodney jams his hands into the pockets of his khakis.
"So," Tony says.
"So," Rodney says.
"I suppose I should say thank you, for, you know." Tony waves a hand around in recognition of, well... you know.
"Don't mention it." Rodney rocks back on his heels, and waits for a moment. "Does this mean you might reconsider..."
Tony smirks. "Not even a little bit." He sobers up suddenly, and the expression is something that Rodney's not quite familiar with on that face, not yet: all of him sharp and angled and focused, dark hair and dark eyes and the shadowed points of his goatee. "I've got... there's stuff to do here. I can't leave it. I owe. Them. You know how it is." He shrugs, the attempt at diffidence awkward on someone whom Rodney is pretty sure is wealthier than God.
"Actually," Rodney says, embarrassed by how well he recognises all the things that Tony is trying not to express, "I kind of do. It's—I hesitate to say that I found a family, because it sounds kind of trite? And also Jeannie would... well, suffice to say that, yes. Yes, I know how it is."
"Okay," Tony says, shuffling his feet a little, the soles of his Converse squeaking on the floor.
"Right," Rodney says, then jerks a thumb over at the suit standing in the centre of the room, the one he's been trying his best not to coo over for the past five minutes. It's shiny. "That's pretty awesome, by the way."
"It is, isn't it?" Tony's grin is shark's tooth white.
"If you'd just sign the non-disclosure form," Rodney says, wheedling for the sake of it, "There's some really awesome stuff I could—"
"McKay."
"Got it," Rodney sighs.
"Come on," Tony says, lifting one shoulder, "You don't have to be back at the airport right away, right? I'll give you the run-through."
"Really?" Rodney says, feeling his face break into a grin broad enough to make his cheeks hurt. He wonders if Tony will let him take pictures on his cell phone because Sheppard will be so jealous.
"Sure," Tony says, reaching over to tap something on a console which makes the suit splay outwards so that Rodney can see inside, and oh, oh, the miniaturised servo-motors alone... "But no photos."
The two of them end up arm deep in the suit, Rodney helping him to tweak the connectors just so, so that this time the upgrade will work right, and making good use of short-cuts he learned from the Ancients. Rodney ends up with engine-grease smeared along one cheekbone and Tony's tank top grows filthy with sweat and dirt. After about two hours, Rodney sits back on his heels because the urge to eat and drink can only be fended off for so long, and Tony glances over at him, one corner of his mouth flicking up into a smile.
"Whatever you're doing," he says, "it's this cool for you, right?" He sounds sincere.
"Trust me when I say," Rodney says, snagging a bottle of water from a nearby work table and knocking back half of it in one gulp, "that it is out of this world." He knows Sam would hit him for that, but really, he hardly ever gets to use that pun.
When he's not hanging out with Sheppard, that is.
Tony looks at him quizzically for a moment, then grins and turns back to his work. "Pass me that wrench?" he asks, and Rodney does, and joins him in mocking all those idiots who'd pontificated at them twenty years ago: the moustached and suited elders of academia who'd sat in a stuffy conference room in Switzerland and sneered at two twenty-year-olds with bad hair and geeky t-shirts, whose words had promised them the stars within their grasp: whose deeds had let them fly up to touch them, to walk beyond them through a field of blue.