elspethdixon | Birthday ficlet for tavella

Space opera AU ficlet. I took a few liberties with the original scenario, but I rhink you'll recognize it ^_~.

It wasn't until his second month on the Iron Shell, after the disastrous mission to Vega Six had finally been wrapped up and Zemo's bid to become Warlord of his own solar system was all over but for the nasty letters from the lawyers at Hammer Intergalactic (Hammer had had substantial sums of money invested in mineral rights on the now-interdicted Vega Six) that Captain Steve Rogers began to suspect that he was being watched.

It wasn't anything he could put his finger on -- no glimpses of a crewmate out of the corner of his eye, no signs that anyone other than himself had ever been in his quarters -- but there were moments when Steve, knowing himself to be alone in his cabin, could nevertheless feel the tingling itch of eyes on the back of his neck.

The Shell's previous Captain had gone insane in the blackness of deep space, flinging himself out the airlock and nearly killing half the crew in the process. Steve had been reading Captain Banner's entries in the ship's log, trying to spot some clue into the man's sudden and unexpected dissolution, to determine what it was about the incident that his crew was not telling him. After three nights in a row spent twitching under the gaze of invisible eyes, he put the logs away, feeling silly for letting a dead man's non-existent ghost get to him.

The staring continued. Someone was watching him. He knew it.

He carefully avoided mentioning his paranoia to Pym or Van Dyne, and most especially to Stark. The Shell's pilot had been forced to watch, helpless, as Banner cycled the main airlock and let himself be sucked out into vacuum, rendered powerless by the manual overrides that locked down his access to the ship's system and gave Banner total control.

The same override codes which, in a truly vicious stroke of irony, were intended to give the Captain of a vessel like the Shell the ability to intervene if the pilot went insane.

Stark didn't need to worry about the possibility of his new captain losing it.

After nearly two weeks dressing, showering, and sleeping with the feeling of some hidden watcher's gaze crawling over his skin, Steve finally cracked, and mentioned the matter to Chief Spacer Odinson.

The ship's medic frowned at him, white-blond brows knitting in thought. "And this unseen watcher gazes upon you only at night? When the rest of the crew sleeps?"

Steve nodded, feeling himself flush, all too aware of how silly it sounded.

"Our noble pilot is not much in the habit of sleeping," Odinson observed, after a long moment's consideration. "Perhaps he doth grow lonely during the dark watches of the night. He and Banner used to play chess at times." It was a tentative suggestion, phrased as a dispassionate observation.

Odinson thought Stark was watching him? The possibility was mildly creepy, but significantly more comforting than the idea that he was imagining the whole thing.

The next time he found himself on the bridge, Steve regarded the lean, dark-haired form in the pilot's chair out of the corner of his eye and casually mentioned that he'd been having trouble sleeping lately. Was it his imagination, or did Stark's habitual smirk falter, just a bit?

"I guess spending all that time in cryogenic sleep left me restless," he added, and then, "I don't suppose you play three-dimensional chess?"

"Thor put you up to this," Stark commented, several hours later, as the two of them faced one another across the holographic planes of a tri-D chess board. "Queen to knight's square six, second level."

The black queen rose vertically through the second level of the chess board, to take possession of the square directly above her. Steve regarded his threatened king, now one move away from being in check, and sighed. "How did you know?"

"Because I asked him if he had, and he told me so." Beneath the dark moustache, lips quirked. "He has many strong points, but secrecy isn't one of them."

He's done a pretty good job hiding whatever it is you people won't tell me about Banner, Steve thought, but he said nothing. Two minutes later, Stark's queen had taken his king, and Steve found himself suggesting another game. He hadn't played seriously since he was a teenager, so naturally, he lost again. It was more fun than he'd expected.

That night, as he stripped off his uniform and got ready for bed, he felt the tingle between his shoulder blades that signaled the presence of his invisible stalker. Stark, using his control over the ship's internal system to spy on him once more. Interesting that it always seemed to happen when Steve was naked.

Actually… His mind flashed on Stark's long, clever finger, gesturing at the chessboard; the hollow at the base of his throat, just visible through the open collar of his Space Legion uniform; the low, slightly throaty voice that made even the most innocuous comment sound like an obscene suggestion.

Actually, now that he thought about it, that was very interesting indeed.

Steve's fingers, which had paused on the fastenings of his uniform tunic, resumed their work, much slower this time. He slide the tunic off an inch at a time, giving Stark a show -- he wasn't sure where the pick-up for the visual feed was, if indeed there was one and he wasn't just imagining the whole thing, so he couldn't face the camera, but it was the intent that counted.

He thought of the neatly-trimmed dark goatee that framed Stark's mouth, wondering what it would feel like against his skin, for once ignoring the little voice in the back of his head that insisted that such thoughts -- that this whole little silent strip tease -- completely violated the spirit of a good half-dozen of the Legion's regulations, which specifically forbid liaisons with spacers under one's command.

Steve reached for the fastenings of his trousers, then hesitated again. "Like what you see, Tony?" he asked aloud.

He halfway didn't expect an answer, expected to discover that he was only talking to himself, and then there was a ripple in the air in front of him, and the Iron Shell's pilot appeared, the holographic projection so detailed that even from less than a foot away, it looked completely and utterly real.

"You have no idea," Tony Stark breathed, his eyes fixed hungrily on Steve. "I didn't know you knew."

Steve shrugged, his face heating. He suddenly felt silly, standing there talking to his XO in nothing but his half-unfastened trousers and a pair of white, Legion issue socks. "I could feel you watching me. Thor thought you were lonely, that you wanted company. That's why the chess."

Tony's eyes traveled slowly over Steve's half-clad form, and he felt the tingling feeling spring to life across his skin again. "That's not all I want."

"If I were doing my duty, I'd order you out of my cabin and use the overrides to lock down the visual feeds," Steve said. He did no such thing, however, simply stood there, exposed skin burning under Tony's steady gaze.

"I've read the Legion code of conduct end to end," Tony said, with a flash of that little smirk that was quickly becoming familiar. "It's only fraternization if we touch each other, and I don't see that happening in the foreseeable future, do you?"

Considering that his pilot officer's body was locked away inside the ship's core, under a layer of solid steel, a complex mechanical life support system the only thing that was keeping his heart beating, no, Steve didn't see it happening.

"If you could touch me," he asked, feeling a momentary flash of guilt as he bid a not-entirely-regretful farewell to regulations, "what would you do?"

The hologram grinned, and reached for the fastenings of his own uniform. "Let me show you."

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steve/tony

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Date: 2008-05-23 10:25 am (UTC)

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