Stony Fluff

Generation Gap

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Warning: mentions of abuse, some strong cursing.

Tony didn't spy on his teammates. Legitimately, he didn't; he wasn't even just trying to bullshit himself out of responsibility for something this time. The AI system kept tabs on their locations at all times they were in the tower for security purposes, and dumped them all onto a list in Tony's lab for the sake of convenience. The odds of anyone or anything that severely disliked them getting inside in the first place were slim to none, but Tony knew at least a couple of them would never be familiar enough with the tower to call out where they were while being unexpectedly attacked. And, in real live genuine actual truth, Tony didn't use that information to watch them. He didn't want to know what most of them got up to, so long as they weren't breaking his stuff or each other. If one of them went somewhere that didn't make any sense, he might pop a camera on to make sure nothing bizarre was going on, but other than that, not a damn thing.

And not one of them would believe him if he told them that. So he still kept the tracking list pretty close to his vest.

See, one of those bizarre things was happening now. It was 1:30 in the morning, and Steve was in an elevator heading up past the residential floors, and then past the R&D floors he didn't even have access to (not in a 'don't let the jock in the nerd clubhouse with all the expensive toys' kind of way, it was just keycarded by department and only Bruce and Tony could unlock the top two). Tony watched the elevator go up, curious, tilting his head a bit when it went all the way up to the rooftop terrace. "Huh. JARVIS, open up the video feed on the roof."

"Of course, sir." The picture popped up on a second monitor, and Tony saw Steve -- wow, storm out of the elevator onto the rooftop. "Christ, he's not gonna dive, is he? Can he survive that?"

"According to our existing data on Captain Rogers--"

"Will you please stop taking me seriously?" Tony's brow furrowed as he watched Steve stop abruptly, leaning hard on the railing and staring daggers out at the lights of Manhattan. Some twinge of something uncomfortable poked at the back of his mind. It took a lot to get Steve this angry. "Did something... happen to him tonight? Someone kick his dog?"

"It appears he spent most of the evening browsing Wikipedia on the GUI that Dr. Banner and I programmed for him. Most of the articles were related to warfare and military technology, with several direct inquiries into Stark Industries' developments. He read a significant amount of the company's publicly available history, and much of what he could access within the company without an employee security clearance." JARVIS paused for a moment. "This was followed by an approximately 90-minute conversation with Ms. Potts, after which he moved to the rooftop."

Steve was pacing now, and talking, not quite softly enough to be to himself. Tony hesitated a moment before activating the microphone on the camera and turning the volume up.

"--waste of time," Steve growled, having trouble pulling words together. "Just. Waste of time and effort I could have spent, I dunno, respecting someone who deserved it!" He folded his arms against the chill night air, eyes narrowed. "Someone that could -- could put his own ego aside for half a minute and pay some attention to what was going on around him. Smart enough to fix the whole planet and that's what comes of it? That's what you decided to do with yourself?"

He stared down the side of the building at the massive sign. "Name a hundred feet tall on a skyscraper. Right up your alley, huh? I'd tear it off myself I didn't know the Stark who earned it."

Tony let out a slow breath, smiling thinly. "A-ha," he laughed brusquely. "So I kicked his dog. Got your patriotism right in the bajingos, huh, Rogers?" He leaned back in his chair and reached over to cut the camera off.