#and like i said in a previous post his voice held up astonishingly well

[eddie-rifff]

uncommon opinion. ant phillips is the swaggiest member of genesis

[dailyironfamily]

day 21 - noir au

Day twenty-one of the November Fic Challenge is a noir AU! In a creative interpretation of the prompt, this is an Iron Man Noir Pepper/Tony/Rhodey fic, set post series and featuring the outside POV trope and detective Natasha Romanoff. (I have no idea if she appears in any of the other Noir comics, but if she does, pretend she didn’t.)

Natasha Romanoff is the best in the business. She knows it, everyone else knows it. (At least everyone else in the know, which is very few people indeed.) But when you want information, you come to her. Which is why she isn’t surprised to see General Fury in her office one evening, following the news of adventurer Tony Stark’s latest exploits.

Stark was home in New York, hospitalized after his latest venture that ended destroying a whole Nazi air fleet, though the details were still hush hush. The details that weren’t published in the latest issue of Marvels, at least, and Natasha knows how these things get embellished. Obviously Fury’s interest in the man has something to do with that, and the news that Stark is going to quit the magazine.

Fury wants a profile on Stark before he brings him in on any classified military intelligence, and Natasha promises to get one done within the week. The first day is research, pulling old newspaper clippings and magazine articles. Stark’s got quite the list of achievements, an industrial legacy left by his father on top of his own adventures. His partner in crime is a man by the name of James Rhodes, who features heavily in the latest Marvels article, which in turn is written by a Pepper Potts, a journalist who normally writes under the name Frank Finlay. These two, and perhaps ex-pilot Edwin Jarvis, are her best way in.

Stark’s still in the hospital, so Natasha makes that her first priority. Getting her hands on a nurse’s uniform is easy, and she blends in seamlessly, stopping at a nurse’s station outside Stark’s room so she can keep an eye on him. The floor is quiet today, and Stark only has one visitor―the Potts woman. She and Stark talk quietly, nothing of interest, at least to Natasha. At one point Potts sees her pass by the door, but only stops her to ask for more water.

When Natasha returns with a fresh pitcher, Pepper is sitting on the edge of Stark’s bed, holding one of his hands in her lap. Natasha stops short, surveying the scene. From what she understands, Potts is a new acquisition to the team, writing only one story after the unfortunate death of Stark’s previous chronicler. Apparently not even a formidable writer like Potts can resist the supposed Stark charm.

“You don’t have to come,” Stark say quietly, fingers brushing over Potts’s wrist. “The front’s no place for a lady.”

“Do I look like a lady, Mr. Stark?” Potts says with a laugh. “Even if you don’t need me as a writer, you could use someone to keep you in line.”

“Then what on Earth would Jarvis have left to do?”

“Patch you up,” Potts suggests, reaching up to gently brush a finger over the bandage on Stark’s nose. “You seem to need it a lot.”

“Which brings me back to my original point. It’ll be dangerous, this job Fury’s got.”

“I’m no stranger to danger, Mr. Stark. I can take care of myself.”

Stark lets go of her hand and reaches for the glass on his bedside table, which is Natasha’s cue to walk into the room with the pitcher. She doesn’t meet either of their eyes, though she does take the opportunity to check Stark’s medical chart before ducking out so she can get a sense of when he’ll be released from the hospital.

Stark spends his first few days out of the hospital presumably preparing to go back out to Europe. Natasha switches wigs, picks up a pair of glasses, and meets with a secretary friend of hers who works at Stark Industries. Security in this place is atrocious, and she’d tell Fury to inform Stark of that fact if it wasn’t working out so well in her favor.

James Rhodes comes in every day to meet with Stark, and while most of the time they’re hidden away in Stark’s office, Natasha catches them in the hall late one evening when most of the employees have already gone home.

“Look,” Stark says, voice low. He and Rhodes are around the corner, and Natasha presses close to the wall and listens. “Before all this, you were talking about quitting. And I get it, we’ve had some good times and some absolutely terrible times. I can’t in good conscience keep putting you in danger if you truly wish to leave.”

It’s interesting, Natasha notes, that Stark seems determined to push his friends away when he could use their help. All of them seem the sort inclined to run towards danger instead of away from it.

“Tony...” Rhodes replies, and there’s a pause. “Honestly, I probably should. But if you’re intent on doing some good for the world, like you said, I can’t leave your side.”

“Pepper wants to come too,” Stark says.

“To report?”

“To keep me in line.”

Rhodes chuckles. “I thought that was Jarvis’s job.”

There’s another silence, longer this time, and Natasha risks peeking her head around the corner. Only to quickly whip back around, though she’s confident neither of them saw her, considering they were awfully busy kissing each other. Well, so much for her theory that Stark was sweet on Potts. She hopes Potts knows that too, or things could get messy if Stark can convince Fury to let him bring his whole team along on whatever secret mission he’s proposed.

Determining nothing else of value is left to gain here, Natasha silently slips away, leaving the two men to their own private business.

Stark has a party the following week celebrating his latest Marvels adventure, because of course he does. Natasha goes blonde and picks out a low cut dress to draw attention away from her face. Potts and Rhodes are both there, though it seems Jarvis declined to attend. Natasha will have to look into this mysterious Jarvis herself soon, at this rate.

As parties go, it’s certainly nice, lots of good food and rich socialites. The editor of Marvels is there too, and he spends most of his time keeping Stark distracted begging him to stay with the magazine. The party gives her the perfect opportunity to go around and casually gossip about Stark while keeping an eye on him. Stark is a gracious host, and he’s perfectly polite to everyone, even the Marvels man, who Natasha would have gotten annoyed with in under three minutes herself.

Late in the evening, as the party winds down, she sees Rhodes and Potts slip away together, going out into the gardens. Intrigued, Natasha follows them, the foliage giving her plenty of cover to eavesdrop.

“Don’t tell me,” Rhodes is saying to something Pepper had asked as Natasha gets closer, “he’s trying to get you to stay behind too.”

“Of course.” Potts sounds slightly frustrated, not the confident, cocky woman Natasha is used to hearing. “He’s really enough of an idiot to do this alone, and after that talk we had.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“That I was going with him, of course. I assume you did the same.”

Rhodes doesn’t reply, but Potts doesn’t say anything else either, so Natasha assumes he nodded or gave some other indication of assent. The pair move deeper into the garden, and Natasha waits a moment to follow.

“You’ve already had one bad run-in with the Nazis,” Rhodey says, and Natasha moves so she can see them, the two sitting on a stone bench by an elaborate fountain that slightly drowns out their words. “You sure you want to risk another?”

“Oh, not you too,” Potts mutters, “I’m not―”

Natasha can’t hear the rest, and she frowns and moves around a bunch of bushes, trying to find a better position. When she looks back through the leaves at the fountain, Potts is kissing Rhodes, one of his hands clasped between hers like she’d held Stark’s hand in the hospital.

Honestly, this is not the kind of drama Natasha expected to find when she started trailing Stark.

And it’s certainly not the kind of information Fury would be interested in. She sighs and draws back around the bushes, debating what to do. If Stark brings Potts and Rhodes with him on the Latveria mission, all that matters is that they can function as a team and get the job done. That could still very well be the case, but...Stark’s paramour making time with his pretty journalist (Natasha still hasn’t determined Stark’s feelings in that regard) behind his back does not create a conducive work environment.

She should’ve just closed the door in Fury’s face and told him to go somewhere else.

In the end, the file she deposits on Fury’s desk doesn’t contain anything about any illicit affairs on anyone’s part. She keeps the focus on Stark, writes up an evaluation that paints him as a loyal patriot, and recommends him for the Latveria job. Along with his team. Fury squints at her like he doesn’t believe any of it, but Natasha just shrugs and tells him if he doesn’t like her work, he can hire someone else.

Apparently, Fury was banking on a favorable report, because Stark, Rhodes, and Potts are outside his office as she exits. There’s an older man with them, who Natasha assumes is the mysterious Jarvis. Stark just nods at her as she walks past, but Potts stops talking to Jarvis and says,

“Wait a minute, wasn’t that the nurse from the hospital?”

Natasha grins and doesn’t stop walking.

Natasha sees them again, three years later. She’s in London between missions, as Fury, goddamn him, had somehow swayed her away from her private practice and into his employ. To her surprise, Stark and his crew are seated at a table in the very same bar, looking somewhat worse for the wear but in astonishingly good spirits.

Jarvis gets up to get them more drinks, and Natasha watches carefully from her corner seat, curious despite herself how things had played out. They’re all clearly still friendly, so if Stark had discovered their deception, he didn’t take it too poorly.

Potts laughs at something he says, reaching over and setting her hand atop of Stark’s on the table. He flips his hand over, entwining their fingers, and Natasha frowns around the rim of her glass. Perhaps Stark had found out and was willing to overlook their indiscretion, fond as he seemingly still is for Potts.

Stark leans back in his chair, stretching his other arm over his head, and when he sets it down it’s across the back of Rhodes’s chair, fingers brushing against Rhodes’s shoulder. Rhodes, instead of getting annoyed, leans into the touch, and Natasha’s eyes go wide as the revelation hits her.

Nobody was stepping out on anyone. Lord, is she an idiot. It’s a good thing she didn’t put anything about this in Stark’s file, Fury would have to fire her on the spot.

Well, she muses as she downs the remains of her beer in one long draught, at least everything worked out all right for everyone.

[thomasbolt]

A Cold Autumn

By Ivan Bunin 

Translated by David Richards

In June of that year he was staying with us on the estate. He'd always been considered one of us, as his late father had been a friend and neighbor of my father's. On the fifteenth of June Franz Ferdinand was killed in Sarajevo. On the morning of the sixteenth the newspapers were delivered from the post office. Father emerged from his study carrying a Moscow evening paper and entered the dining-room, where he, Mama and I were still sitting at the table, and said:    'Well, my friends, it's war! The Austrian Crown Prince has been killed in Sarajevo. It's war!'    On St Peter's Day a crowd of visitors gathered at the house -- it was father's name-day -- and over dinner our engagement was announced. But on the nineteenth of July Germany declared war on Russia.    In September he came to us for just twenty-four hours, to say goodbye before going off to the front. (Everyone at that time thought that the war would soon be over, and our wedding had been postponed till the spring.) So this was our last evening together. After supper the servants brought in the samovar as usual and as he glanced at the windows which were steamed up from its heat, father said:    'What an astonishingly early and cold autumn!'    We sat quietly that evening, only occasionally exchanging the odd insignificant word, hiding our innermost thoughts and feelings with exaggerated calm. It was with the same affected simplicity that father had made his remark about the autumn. I went up the door into the balcony and wiped the glass with a cloth: out in the garden the pure icy stars were sparkling with a sharp brilliance against the black sky. Father was smoking, leaning back on his armchair and absently gazing at the hot lamp suspended over the table; by its light Mama, in her spectacles, was carefully sewing a little silk bag -- we knew what it was for -- and the scene was both touching and chilling.    Father asked:    'So, you still want to set off in the morning rather than after lunch?'    'Yes, if I may, in the morning,' he answered. 'It's very sad, but I still haven't managed to see to everything at home.'    Father let out a slight sigh:    'Well, as you wish, dear boy. Only in that case it's time Mama and I went to bed; we certainly don't want to miss seeing you off tomorrow…'    Mama stood up and made the sign of the cross over her son to be; he bent down and kissed her hand, and then father's. Left alone, we lingered in the dining-room; I decided to set out a game of patience, while he paced from one corner of the room to another. Then suddenly he asked:    'Shall we go for a little walk?'    My heart was growing heavier and heavier, and I answered indifferently:    'All right.'    As he put on his coat in the entrance hall he was still deep in thought, and then with a sweet smile he suddenly recited some lines from Fet:

   'What a cold autumn!    Put on your bonnet and shawl…'

   'I don't have a bonnet,' I said. 'But how does it go on?'    'I don't remember. Something like:

   'Look -- through the darkening pine trees    A fire is arising…'

   'What fire?'    'The rising moon, of course. There's a certain autumnal, rustic charm to those lines: "Put on your bonnet and shawl." That's our grandfathers' and grandmothers' time…Oh, my God, my God!'    'What is it?'    'Nothing, dearest love. But I do feel sad. Sad, but contented. I love you very, very much…'    We put out coats on, went through the dining room out onto the balcony and then down into the garden. At first it was so dark I held onto his sleeve. Then the black boughs which were sprinkled with metallically brilliant stars began to stand out against the lightening sky. Stopping for a moment, he turned to face the house:    'Look how the windows are shining in a special autumn way. I shall remember this evening as long as I live.'    I looked at the windows, as he embraced me in my Swiss cloak. I brushed my mohair scarf away from my face and tilted my head back slightly so he could kiss me. When he'd kissed me he looked into my face.    'How your eyes sparkle,' he said. 'Aren't you cold? The air's quite wintry. If I'm killed, you won't forget me straightaway?'    I found myself thinking: 'Suppose he really is killed? Surely there won't come a time when I'll forget him -- though in the end we do forget everything…'    And frightened by my own thought, I answered hurriedly:    'Don't talk like that. I wouldn't survive your death.'    After a short pause he pronounced slowly:    'Anyway, if I am killed, I'll wait for you over there. You live, be happy for a while in the world, and then come to me.'    I burst into tears…    In the morning he set off. Round his neck Mama hung that fateful little bag she'd been sewing the previous evening -- it contained a small golden icon which had been carried to war by both her father and her grandfather -- and we made the sign of the cross over him with nervously jerky despair. Watching him go, we stood on the porch in that state of stupefaction always experienced when saying farewell to someone before a long separation, and all we felt was the astonishing incongruity between ourselves and the joyful, sunny morning around us with its with its hoar-frost sparkling on the grass. We stood there for awhile and then went back into the house. I walked through the rooms with my hands behind my back, not knowing what to do with myself, whether I should sob or sing at the top of my voice…    He was killed -- what a strange word! -- a month later, in Galicia. And since then a whole thirty years have passed. And I've experienced so much through those years which seem so long when you consider them carefully and go over in your memory all that magical, incomprehensible thing called the past which neither the heart nor the mind can grasp. In the spring of 1918, by which time my father and mother were both dead, I was living in Moscow, in the cellar of a house belonging to a woman trading on the Smolensk market who regularly mocked me with her 'Well, your excellency, how are your circumstances?' I engaged in trade myself and, like many others at that time, I sold to soldiers in Caucasian fur caps and unbuttoned greatcoats some of the things I still had -- a ring, a little cross, a moth-eaten fur collar -- and then one day while trading on the corner of the Arbat and the Smolensk market I met a man with a rare beautiful soul, an elderly retired soldier; we soon got married and in April I went off with him to Yekaterinodar. It took almost two weeks to get there with him and his nephew, a boy of seventeen who was trying to make his way to the Volunteers -- I disguised as a peasant-woman in bast shoes, he in a worn Cossack coat and with a newly-grown black and silver beard -- and then we spent over two years on the Don and in the Kuban. In the winter, during the hurricane, we set sail from Novorssiysk for Turkey with a huge crowd of other refugees, and on the way, at sea, my husband died of typhus. After that, of all my nearest and dearest only three remained in the whole world -- my husband's nephew, the latter's wife and their little girl, a child of seven months. But soon after this the nephew sailed off with his wife for the Crimea to join up with Wrangel, leaving the child on my hands. There they too disappeared without trace. And then I lived for a long time in Constantinople, earning a living for myself and the child by back-breaking manual labor. Then, like so many others, I wandered the world with her -- Bulgaria, Serbia, Bohemia, Belgium, Paris, Nice… The little girl grew up long ago; she stayed in Paris and became a model Frenchwoman, very pretty and completely indifferent to me; she used to work in a confectioner's near the Madeleine, using her manicured hands with their silver fingernails to wrap up boxes in satin paper and gold string; and I lived, and am still living in Nice on what God provides… I saw Nice for the first time in 1912 -- and could never have imagined in those happy days what the city would one day become for me!    So I did survive his death, even though I once impetuously said I wouldn't. But when I recall everything I've experienced since that time, I always ask myself: 'What, when all this is said and done, has there been in my life?' And I answer: 'Only that cold autumn evening.' Did it ever exist? Yes, it did. And that is all there has been in my life. All the rest has been a useless dream. But I believe, I do ardently believe that somewhere over there he is waiting for me -- with the same love and the same youthfulness as on that evening. 'You live, be happy for a while in the world, and then come to me…' I have lived, I have been happy for a while, and now, quite soon, I'll come.

   3 May 1944