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Fic: Advances in Thermodynamics (6/6)
Title: Advances in Thermodynamics (6/6)
Fandom: Firefly/Iron Man (movie)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Tony Stark/Kaylee Frye
Summary: Tony comes home from Serenity Valley a changed man.
Necessary explanation: I asked for prompts, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
agonistes told me to write Tony/Kaylee. I said 'MWAHAHA' at the time and happily started writing in things designed to make Sweeney twitch, but I think that she officially gets the last laugh, because this ate my brain alive. Part 1 can be found here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, and Part 5.5 here.
It's been seventeen months, two weeks, and four days since Tony Stark landed on Three Hills.
Now Kaylee fidgets on a different airstrip, tugging at her sleeves. She looks like hell, she knows -- red eyes, dark circles, her hair flying all over the place in the wind from the engines of the shuttle setting down. Military issue, she thinks wildly; medium-range, Blue Sun manufacture. She raises a hand over her eyes, shielding them from the sun and pelting grit.
She knows she’s jiggling in place. She’s trying, hard, to stop her hands from shaking. Happy’s standing behind her, his hands clasped in front of him. There are a couple other guys in sunglasses and dark suits; Kaylee wants their implacability, their steadiness, for herself. She doesn’t know how Happy does it.
The ramp begins to lower, agonizingly slow. The right servomotor’s squeaking like hell; it could use half a can of lube, maybe a replacement piston—
Tony Stark looks real small on that huge ramp, and pale. His right arm’s in a sling. Kaylee sucks a breath in through her teeth and holds it; doesn’t notice her fingernails cutting into her palm. His suit is too big. He looks small. That’s something Kaylee never thought she’d think about Tony “Larger than Life” Stark. But he’s got his head up high, leaning on Rhodey (Rhodey, whose uniform is crisp and perfect and whose arm is out of the sling she'd last seen him in, but who looks like the same kinda hell Kaylee feels like, and like he ain’t ever planning on letting Tony out of his sight anytime soon). Tony’s hair is neat and his eyes are as clear as she’s ever seen ‘em.
Rhodey mutters something and they both glance down as one as they step off the ramp. Tony takes one look at the waiting medical stretcher and attendants making their way over, and he waves it off. “Are you kidding me with this? Get rid of them.”
Rhodey motions away the medical technicians; by the time he looks back, Tony has escaped his grip and he’s coming toward Kaylee. Tony stops a few meters away and peers at her in his old familiar way. “Your eyes are red,” he says. “A few tears for your long-lost boss?”
“Nope.” Kaylee's eyes are brimming over; there’s a tremor in her voice and her fingers have gone numb. “Lotsa dust on this field.”
He looks at her for a long moment, Kaylee standing there with her hands clenching and unclenching, her mouth wobbling uncontrollably. Then Tony opens his left arm wide and crooks his finger at her. “Come on,” he says, resigned. “I know you want to. Let’s get this over with.”
Kaylee beams shakily and folds into him, mindful of the sling after he grunts when she bumps it. She hugs him real careful at first, but when he doesn’t give any indication of pain or fade away under her grip, she hugs him for real. She’s got her arms around him, clenched hands making a mess of his suit jacket in the middle of his back, and her face buried in his shoulder. He smells like new clothes and metal, and, she realizes belatedly (absently), he’s holding her almost as tight as she is him. It’s just for a second, and then he’s patting her shoulders the way he has the time or two she’s hugged him in the past; he’s probably shooting Rhodey and Happy and the guys in dark suits a ‘women, right?’ sort of a look over her head. But that quick one-armed hug was a strong, strong thing.
There’s something under his shirt in the center of his chest, hard and circular against her breasts, and Kaylee remembers what it is that Rhodey said in the short wave that she got a couple hours ago. He’s hurt, Kaylee; he rigged up some – he rigged something to keep shrapnel out of his heart. You’ve got to see it to believe it. It’s a miniature version of a—
Her eyes widen and she draws back and finds the outline of the thing with her hand; it’s smooth and unyielding even through several layers of shirts. Her wide, questioning eyes flick up to his, but he stiffens the second that she touches it and Kaylee swiftly pulls her hand back.
“Now’s not exactly the time or the place, Frye,” Tony says, terse and under his breath, and that ain’t the man who left for Serenity Valley three months ago, not those hard lines or those hunched shoulders, or that swift, hunted glance from side to side.
“No,” she says, shaken and trying to sound like she’s not (and doing a poor job of it). “No, of course it ain’t. Duìbùqĭ. It’s real good to see you, though. Real good.”
“Well, it’s good-real-good to be back,” Tony says, flippant as ever but he looks too tired still to be the Tony of old; too haunted deep in his eyes. He raises his voice. “Where’s Wilmer? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I need Wilmer. Where’s she lurking?”
Wilmer steps out of the backseat, all long legs and constrained caution. “Welcome back, sir,” she starts to say, but Tony brushes past her, crooking a finger at Kaylee over his shoulder. That hasn’t changed a bit, him forgetting himself and ordering her around, but Kaylee’s too worried for it to do much but set her teeth a little on edge. “Wilmer, I need you to schedule a press conference, and Hogan, on the way, we’re stopping for bao.” He steps into the waiting personal craft.
A press conference? Kaylee shoots a look back at Rhodey, her level of concern ratcheted right the hell up, but he doesn’t seem to have heard; he’s in close conversation with the pair of medics who’d tried to take Tony away on the grav-stretcher. Setting her shoulders and steeling herself, Kaylee sinks into the passenger seat of the personal craft, and is almost too distracted to remember to nod her thanks to Happy when he shuts the door for her.
"Was quite a show, what you put on this afternoon," Kaylee says to the sound of the newsfeed as she comes down the stairs. She figures he's jumpy. She figures she better announce her presence.
"Hm," says Tony, and as the workshop comes into view, he's leaning over the blank imaging table. He has nothing at hand, its lights are out -- Kaylee can't shake the immediate instinct that he was working on something and shut it off real quick when he heard her coming, which would be stupid, what with all the proprietary, scandalous gŏushĭ she's seen and kept her mouth shut about.
She feels a little stab of hurt.
"Good to hear my skills haven't eroded with captivity," he says, too lightly, and he's jiggling a stylus back and forth between thumb and forefinger. Kaylee is almost entirely certain that it's an unconscious gesture.
She tries not to cringe; steps farther into the workshop, nice and slow, and tries a different tack. "How was Rhodey?"
“--ilians have been caught in the crossfire between Independent fighters and Alliance forces,” says the tinny female voice, and Kaylee can't stop her eyes from flicking toward the feed. “The death count has been estimated in the hundreds and it rises by the hour. The local government is attempting to evacuate the population, but in the meantime, the battle rages on. This is Tian Xui Li, reporting live from--”
Tony flicks off the feeds and finally glances her way. “Fine,” he says shortly. “He's just dandy.” He tosses his stylus up and catches it.
"You two fight?" Kaylee asks carefully. When he shoots her a sharp look, she resolutely does not allow her hands to clench into fists. "Behooves me to know, seein' as how I got to work with both of you."
"Yes," he says, "it behooves me to inform you that yes, we fought."
Tony never gets real bothered by their spats, proud as sin as he is. Rhodey's always okay in Tony's book, no matter what Rhodey says or does, and as mad as Rhodey gets sometimes, the opposite's true, too. So any conversation with Rhodey that gets that bitter, brittle note in Tony's voice, that far-off, mad look in his eyes … it puts Kaylee on the alert. It sets her nerves on edge.
“Mom doesn't approve of my career change,” Tony says, clipped.
“Well, it is losin’ him his job,” Kaylee says, reasonable and gentle. “Bein’ a Fed liaison to S.E. an’ all. Ain’t much for him to liaise with, you quit makin’ weapons.”
“You know, I’m pretty sure one job is a fairly inconsequential thing in the face of millions of lives.” Kaylee knows immediately from his tone of voice that she just made a critical error and it’s too late to take it back; she can’t contain her wince, and that just seems to irritate him all the more. Tony steps back from the imaging table, folding his arms. “I’m doing the right thing here. Nobody seems to care about that.”
“You are doin' the right thing, and I care.” Kaylee’s voice determinedly does not wobble. “Rhodey cares, too.” At Tony’s scoff and disgusted turn away, Kaylee’s eyes narrow and she steps forward, her hands curling into unnoticed fists at her sides. “We both care, Tony; we both had to deal, not knowin’ what happened to you, for months. You know what kinda life that is? A gorram yī dà tuó dàbiàn one, that’s what!”
Tony is watching her now, his face inscrutable and eyes hooded, one hand resting on his opposite elbow and the other holding the glass of water (what Kaylee really hopes is water) he’d just reached for.
“So I’m sorry if maybe either of us is kinda raw right now.”
He arches an eyebrow in a show of indifferent amusement (barely covering something deeper, something madder), and Kaylee doesn’t recognize that expression. She can almost feel the chill from across the room. “You two are presenting quite the united front; let me guess – he started dating you, too right after I disappeared out of the capture frame.”
“Now you’re bein’ a chŭnrén just ‘cause you can,” Kaylee tells him, flat, and she folds her arms over her chest. “Rhodey an’ Rae got with each other in the first place ‘cause they missed the hell outta you. You’re bein’ nasty, to all’ve us, and I ain’t gonna keep my mouth shut about it just ‘cause you been gone.” She wills her lips to stay set in one firm line; she stares right at him, and then she says: “Quit it.”
“I'm—” For a brief second, his eyes flash; his voice raised. Kaylee thinks he’s gonna yell, and as ugly as it all is and as bad of a feeling as it sets to squirming in her chest, she’s almost relieved – Tony’s not okay, he’s really not, and at least when he’s yelling, he’s not pretending nothing ever happened in Serenity Valley.
And then his mouth snaps shut, and she knows: he has closed down again. “Will that be all, Miss Frye?”
She folds her arms. “The hell's that supposed to mean?”
“It means that I think you could use a week’s vacation. Starting an hour ago.”
“...You ain't serious.” Kaylee's initial reaction could have gone a lot of ways, she later figures – mad, rejected, wounded, betrayed – but the first thing she feels is incredulous. “You're changin' the focus of the company entirely and you got no idea what we been doin' lately and you been missing the last three months, and you want me to go have sparkly drinks by a pool somewhere?”
“Yep,” says Tony, pretending to think about it for barely half a second. “That sounds about right.” Kaylee has never seen this expression before on Tony; it's intent and cold. It's like she's looking at a stranger.
She counts to five. She doesn't say the first thing that comes to mind, or the second, or even the third. She stands in the doorway, white and furious (and afraid – I don't wanna leave you alone like this in this big old house, you chŭnrén, she thinks, and lăotiān Yé, what did they do to you), and she says, “I don't particularly wanna talk to you right now,” and she grabs her bag off the nearest table, turns around, and goes up the stairs.
“That's fine by me!” Tony hollers after her.
Upstairs, Kaylee yanks her jacket out of the closet with more force than is strictly required and she jams her sleeves into it. The fountain cascades continually, water tumbling from the second floor to land in the pool on the first. Kaylee stands in the middle of the giant living room and feels very small. He don't mean it, she tells the lump in her throat. He's goin' through a tough time. You don't know what got done to him. You can't help him, and that ain't your fault.
“Jarvis?” she says. Her voice comes out shaky; she clears her throat.
“Yes, Miss Frye?”
“Keep an eye on Tony, would you? I mean – not an eye, not literal-like, but – talk him outta doin' anything dumb.” Who's she kidding; nobody can talk Tony out of doing stupid things, and especially not the artificial intelligence that he created. “Or at least call me if somethin' goes real wrong,” she finishes lamely.
“Certainly, Miss Frye,” Jarvis's voice says. “I'll find you at the usual coordinates?”
“No umbrella drinks or poolboys for me,” she murmurs quietly, and it isn't anywhere near as wistful as it ought to be.
“I'm sorry?”
“Usual coordinates, Jarvis,” Kaylee says, and she doesn't look back as she shuts the enormous front door behind her.
When Kaylee waves Rhodey, it takes four tries to get him on the channel and he only tells her – his voice clipped and his face as serious as she's ever seen it – he can't talk about it.
Tony says, “Hey,” voice low and quiet and distracted, no games and no airs.
“... Wèi,” Kaylee says, equally soft, as she takes the first few slow steps into the cavernous workshop. It's eerily silent. No music, no clanking, no pounding, no talking. Just her heartbeat and the well-oiled quiet whir of Dummy's gears.
Tony stands some fifty feet away, with a table, a desk, some machinery, and some open space separating them; he's barefoot and wearing only sleeping pants, which ain't nothing Kaylee's never seen before. The new part is the glowing blue circle embedded in the center of his chest. She categorizes the parts and the concept in her head lightning fast, without thinking about it. Scrap metal, hurried unprofessional wirework, copper wiring, some kind of glass alloy, palladium, and then she gets stuck on the network of terrible raised scars and blue-purple-black bruises ringing the reactor, and she would swear her own heart stops for a second.
Some of her roiling distress must show through in her expression, because Tony says, “Bù kĕ néng. I'm not gonna explode.” He raps the reactor's faceplate with three knuckles – transparisteel, Kaylee thinks numbly, from the sound of it – and sets down the delicate tool he'd been holding onto. Perched in front of him, its metal “wrist” rotating, Dummy chirps an inquisitive noise, and Tony shakes his head. “All set. Sleep mode.”
As Dummy backs away several feet and powers down with a low whine, Kaylee takes a couple steps forward, her arms crossed over her chest out of some sense of protectiveness; to keep herself from surging forward and touching that reactor all over, getting a sense of how it works and what in the guĭ she can do to improve it so it doesn't hurt him. “You waved me,” she points out, equal parts caution and mulishness.
“I need your hands.” When Kaylee just looks at him, unmoving, he reaches over on the table and picks up another glowing blue hunk of machinery. This one has all the interior tubing and wires spilling out, Tony's literal heart in his own hands. “This,” he lightly shakes the reactor, “is the new model; the one not designed in a cave and built with scraps. It needs to replace the original. My hands are too big for the job, and Dummy's name is Dummy for a reason, so I figured I'd go through the list of people I know who have small hands and probably won't use the opportunity to fry me.”
I bet that's a short list, Kaylee thinks, and then she clutches her bicep, hard, at the cruelty of the stray thought. That last from Tony sounds moderately more like the Tony she knows; it doesn't sound as much like the quiet, subdued stranger who's standing there half-naked in more ways than one. “So you waved me,” she says.
“So I waved you.”
“I ain't a doctor,” she says, uncertain and feeling younger than she has in a long time.
“Good thing I need a mechanic,” Tony tells her, and he stands there, his expression unchanging in the faint blue cast from his chest, and he waits.
“Everything's different, Kaylee,” he says, after she doesn't move. “It all changed; I changed. I can't go back to the way things were before.” His voice is hoarse and more determined than anything she's ever heard out of him.
“What's that mean?” she asks, her eyes on him even as her fingers pluck at her jacket sleeve. There's a thread loose; it'll have to be fixed.
“No more useless gŏu pì. No more weapons that hurt people. I have to do something.” His face is still too thin and shadowed with new hurts that she doesn't know the causes of (but can guess at, and her guesses scare her). Extrapolating from the look of the bags under his eyes, she thinks he probably hasn't slept a wink in the three days since she last saw him.
Kaylee takes several steps toward him, her boots scuffing the floor, and with each step, she sees more and more marks on him that weren't there the morning he left Osiris three months ago, and those observations alone push her around the work table. They can talk crazy sweeping mission statements later, she tells herself. They can talk about that shiny half-healed burn on his arm and the old dark lines across his ribs, about why he isn't wearing his sling anymore, later. “What'm I doin'?” she asks briskly from directly in front of him, her hands half-raised toward his chest, and Tony gives a very contained, very real smile.
“This one,” he grunts, and he puts a hand across the reactor in his chest, gives two tiny twists back and forth, and begins to slowly pull it out of himself, “needs to come out.” Kaylee swallows hard but she sets her jaw against the slick sound it makes and the carnage she's sure she's about to see. When Tony gives a sharp tug to yank it the rest of the way out, though, all she sees is some sort of smooth metal. He must have forged it to exact specifications and used it to line the gaping hole in him, and before she remembers herself, she rests an unsteady hand on his chest, her thumb just over the edge of the metal cylinder. The scars are bumpy and rough, the metal cold. His skin leaps under her fingers but he doesn't step away, even though the sudden stiffness in his posture tells her that he isn't used to being touched and he doesn't like it.
“Now what?” she asks, dropping her hand to her side and looking up at his set face.
“I'll need you to reach in and connect a couple leads.” He gives her the new arc reactor, the sleek one with the perfectly wrapped wire coils and the trailing leads. “Red with red, blue with blue, etcetera with etcetera, without touching the leads to the lining.”
For all the fact that he's asking her to do it, that they spent a thoroughly memorable night exploring each other three months ago and that she's half-lived in his house long enough to see him in incredibly compromising positions, this is the worst. It feels like a violation on the most basic level, reaching straight inside him, and Kaylee freezes, woodenly letting him pass his heart into her hands.
“--Sometime within the next thirty seconds,” Tony says. “Or my heart will stop. Not to rush you here.”
She swallows a sharp intake of breath and, balancing the weight of the device in one hand, takes up the red lead and reaches inside him with the other. There's something slick and slimy coating the walls of the metal lining and she doesn't stop to think about what it is or what she's doing. She just clips the red lead into place and moves on to the blue.
“You should see your face,” says Tony's voice from above her. The rumble inside his chest when he talks is just about the worst gorram thing Kaylee has ever felt. “I'm almost regretting powering down Dummy and his vidcapture function.”
“Don't,” she snaps furiously without looking up – yellow attaches to yellow – and Tony doesn't say anything else. Don't joke about this, she finishes in her head. Don't you try to make it funny that somebody hurt you so bad that I got my arm so far inside you I can't see half of it. Green goes to green, Kaylee's hand only shaking a little, and then the heart lights up blue and glowy and she says, “Okay. Leads're done.”
“Fit it into the socket,” Tony directs, and she does it; she very, very carefully settles it in and on his instruction turns it like the tumbler on a safe to lock it into place, and when she's done, she can't help leaving her fingers there for a few extra seconds. She's making sure it's in okay and that it's working; that his body really is warm under her fingertips and that he's standing here, flawed but real as day. He's looking down at her hands, uncharacteristically quiet and still and serious-faced, and now that the delicate work is over, Kaylee lets her fingers tremble a little.
“I want to have you look at something,” he says, and this time, the buzz of his voice against her hands is the regular kind, not the inside-out one. Her chin rises swiftly, and just as hastily, he adds, “Which is not anywhere on my person.”
“The 'something' you gotta do?” she asks, finally stepping back, out of his space, and folding her arms again.
“Got it in one,” says Tony, and without any preamble (later, she'll think: well, that deserved a hell of a lot more fanfare), he says, “Jarvis, put it up.”
A translucent red image shimmers into being between the two of them. It's taller than Kaylee (just a little taller than Tony) and man-shaped, hovering a few inches off the floor, and Kaylee stares at it.
“Boot thruster jets won't be up to spec for flyin' in the black,” she finally says, automatic, and through the design's slowly rotating helmet, she can see Tony Stark's entire face light up with the force of his grin.
Chinese translations [primarily from here]:
Duìbùqĭ - I'm sorry; excuse me
Bao - A type of steamed, filled bun or bread-like (i.e. made with yeast) item in various Chinese cuisines.
Gŏushĭ - Crap
Yī dà tuó dàbiàn - Big pile of shit
Chŭnrén - Jerk; fool
Lăotiān Yé - Jesus
Wèi - Hey
Bù kĕ néng - Impossible; never going to happen
Guĭ - Hell
Gŏu pì - Bullshit
Notes: Oh, wow. Um. I think I'm done. Only ... a year and eight months after I started. This whole thing is Sweeney's fault, both for prompting me in the first place and then by encouraging me once I started, both directly via words and by indulging me with AU RP shenanigans. (Thanks, Sweeney!) I can't promise I won't come back to this world, since I have a lot of ideas about Tony's three months of captivity (hint: he was held by Dust Devils, and if you've read the Serenity comics, you know the identity of the individual in the crew who was a Dust Devil), what Rhodey and Kaylee were doing during that time, and where the unmentioned Firefly cast of characters can be found in this universe -- and also about what happens next -- but those will likely be one-shots, not 24000-word explosions that take the better part of two years to write. Thanks for reading and not killing me during the epically long waits between chapters!
AND THEN EVERYONE WENT THROUGH THE EVENTS OF IRON MAN, ONLY WITH MORE SPACESHIPS AND COWBOYS.
THE END.
Fandom: Firefly/Iron Man (movie)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Tony Stark/Kaylee Frye
Summary: Tony comes home from Serenity Valley a changed man.
Necessary explanation: I asked for prompts, and
agonistes told me to write Tony/Kaylee. I said 'MWAHAHA' at the time and happily started writing in things designed to make Sweeney twitch, but I think that she officially gets the last laugh, because this ate my brain alive. Part 1 can be found here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, and Part 5.5 here.It's been seventeen months, two weeks, and four days since Tony Stark landed on Three Hills.
Now Kaylee fidgets on a different airstrip, tugging at her sleeves. She looks like hell, she knows -- red eyes, dark circles, her hair flying all over the place in the wind from the engines of the shuttle setting down. Military issue, she thinks wildly; medium-range, Blue Sun manufacture. She raises a hand over her eyes, shielding them from the sun and pelting grit.
She knows she’s jiggling in place. She’s trying, hard, to stop her hands from shaking. Happy’s standing behind her, his hands clasped in front of him. There are a couple other guys in sunglasses and dark suits; Kaylee wants their implacability, their steadiness, for herself. She doesn’t know how Happy does it.
The ramp begins to lower, agonizingly slow. The right servomotor’s squeaking like hell; it could use half a can of lube, maybe a replacement piston—
Tony Stark looks real small on that huge ramp, and pale. His right arm’s in a sling. Kaylee sucks a breath in through her teeth and holds it; doesn’t notice her fingernails cutting into her palm. His suit is too big. He looks small. That’s something Kaylee never thought she’d think about Tony “Larger than Life” Stark. But he’s got his head up high, leaning on Rhodey (Rhodey, whose uniform is crisp and perfect and whose arm is out of the sling she'd last seen him in, but who looks like the same kinda hell Kaylee feels like, and like he ain’t ever planning on letting Tony out of his sight anytime soon). Tony’s hair is neat and his eyes are as clear as she’s ever seen ‘em.
Rhodey mutters something and they both glance down as one as they step off the ramp. Tony takes one look at the waiting medical stretcher and attendants making their way over, and he waves it off. “Are you kidding me with this? Get rid of them.”
Rhodey motions away the medical technicians; by the time he looks back, Tony has escaped his grip and he’s coming toward Kaylee. Tony stops a few meters away and peers at her in his old familiar way. “Your eyes are red,” he says. “A few tears for your long-lost boss?”
“Nope.” Kaylee's eyes are brimming over; there’s a tremor in her voice and her fingers have gone numb. “Lotsa dust on this field.”
He looks at her for a long moment, Kaylee standing there with her hands clenching and unclenching, her mouth wobbling uncontrollably. Then Tony opens his left arm wide and crooks his finger at her. “Come on,” he says, resigned. “I know you want to. Let’s get this over with.”
Kaylee beams shakily and folds into him, mindful of the sling after he grunts when she bumps it. She hugs him real careful at first, but when he doesn’t give any indication of pain or fade away under her grip, she hugs him for real. She’s got her arms around him, clenched hands making a mess of his suit jacket in the middle of his back, and her face buried in his shoulder. He smells like new clothes and metal, and, she realizes belatedly (absently), he’s holding her almost as tight as she is him. It’s just for a second, and then he’s patting her shoulders the way he has the time or two she’s hugged him in the past; he’s probably shooting Rhodey and Happy and the guys in dark suits a ‘women, right?’ sort of a look over her head. But that quick one-armed hug was a strong, strong thing.
There’s something under his shirt in the center of his chest, hard and circular against her breasts, and Kaylee remembers what it is that Rhodey said in the short wave that she got a couple hours ago. He’s hurt, Kaylee; he rigged up some – he rigged something to keep shrapnel out of his heart. You’ve got to see it to believe it. It’s a miniature version of a—
Her eyes widen and she draws back and finds the outline of the thing with her hand; it’s smooth and unyielding even through several layers of shirts. Her wide, questioning eyes flick up to his, but he stiffens the second that she touches it and Kaylee swiftly pulls her hand back.
“Now’s not exactly the time or the place, Frye,” Tony says, terse and under his breath, and that ain’t the man who left for Serenity Valley three months ago, not those hard lines or those hunched shoulders, or that swift, hunted glance from side to side.
“No,” she says, shaken and trying to sound like she’s not (and doing a poor job of it). “No, of course it ain’t. Duìbùqĭ. It’s real good to see you, though. Real good.”
“Well, it’s good-real-good to be back,” Tony says, flippant as ever but he looks too tired still to be the Tony of old; too haunted deep in his eyes. He raises his voice. “Where’s Wilmer? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I need Wilmer. Where’s she lurking?”
Wilmer steps out of the backseat, all long legs and constrained caution. “Welcome back, sir,” she starts to say, but Tony brushes past her, crooking a finger at Kaylee over his shoulder. That hasn’t changed a bit, him forgetting himself and ordering her around, but Kaylee’s too worried for it to do much but set her teeth a little on edge. “Wilmer, I need you to schedule a press conference, and Hogan, on the way, we’re stopping for bao.” He steps into the waiting personal craft.
A press conference? Kaylee shoots a look back at Rhodey, her level of concern ratcheted right the hell up, but he doesn’t seem to have heard; he’s in close conversation with the pair of medics who’d tried to take Tony away on the grav-stretcher. Setting her shoulders and steeling herself, Kaylee sinks into the passenger seat of the personal craft, and is almost too distracted to remember to nod her thanks to Happy when he shuts the door for her.
"Was quite a show, what you put on this afternoon," Kaylee says to the sound of the newsfeed as she comes down the stairs. She figures he's jumpy. She figures she better announce her presence.
"Hm," says Tony, and as the workshop comes into view, he's leaning over the blank imaging table. He has nothing at hand, its lights are out -- Kaylee can't shake the immediate instinct that he was working on something and shut it off real quick when he heard her coming, which would be stupid, what with all the proprietary, scandalous gŏushĭ she's seen and kept her mouth shut about.
She feels a little stab of hurt.
"Good to hear my skills haven't eroded with captivity," he says, too lightly, and he's jiggling a stylus back and forth between thumb and forefinger. Kaylee is almost entirely certain that it's an unconscious gesture.
She tries not to cringe; steps farther into the workshop, nice and slow, and tries a different tack. "How was Rhodey?"
“--ilians have been caught in the crossfire between Independent fighters and Alliance forces,” says the tinny female voice, and Kaylee can't stop her eyes from flicking toward the feed. “The death count has been estimated in the hundreds and it rises by the hour. The local government is attempting to evacuate the population, but in the meantime, the battle rages on. This is Tian Xui Li, reporting live from--”
Tony flicks off the feeds and finally glances her way. “Fine,” he says shortly. “He's just dandy.” He tosses his stylus up and catches it.
"You two fight?" Kaylee asks carefully. When he shoots her a sharp look, she resolutely does not allow her hands to clench into fists. "Behooves me to know, seein' as how I got to work with both of you."
"Yes," he says, "it behooves me to inform you that yes, we fought."
Tony never gets real bothered by their spats, proud as sin as he is. Rhodey's always okay in Tony's book, no matter what Rhodey says or does, and as mad as Rhodey gets sometimes, the opposite's true, too. So any conversation with Rhodey that gets that bitter, brittle note in Tony's voice, that far-off, mad look in his eyes … it puts Kaylee on the alert. It sets her nerves on edge.
“Mom doesn't approve of my career change,” Tony says, clipped.
“Well, it is losin’ him his job,” Kaylee says, reasonable and gentle. “Bein’ a Fed liaison to S.E. an’ all. Ain’t much for him to liaise with, you quit makin’ weapons.”
“You know, I’m pretty sure one job is a fairly inconsequential thing in the face of millions of lives.” Kaylee knows immediately from his tone of voice that she just made a critical error and it’s too late to take it back; she can’t contain her wince, and that just seems to irritate him all the more. Tony steps back from the imaging table, folding his arms. “I’m doing the right thing here. Nobody seems to care about that.”
“You are doin' the right thing, and I care.” Kaylee’s voice determinedly does not wobble. “Rhodey cares, too.” At Tony’s scoff and disgusted turn away, Kaylee’s eyes narrow and she steps forward, her hands curling into unnoticed fists at her sides. “We both care, Tony; we both had to deal, not knowin’ what happened to you, for months. You know what kinda life that is? A gorram yī dà tuó dàbiàn one, that’s what!”
Tony is watching her now, his face inscrutable and eyes hooded, one hand resting on his opposite elbow and the other holding the glass of water (what Kaylee really hopes is water) he’d just reached for.
“So I’m sorry if maybe either of us is kinda raw right now.”
He arches an eyebrow in a show of indifferent amusement (barely covering something deeper, something madder), and Kaylee doesn’t recognize that expression. She can almost feel the chill from across the room. “You two are presenting quite the united front; let me guess – he started dating you, too right after I disappeared out of the capture frame.”
“Now you’re bein’ a chŭnrén just ‘cause you can,” Kaylee tells him, flat, and she folds her arms over her chest. “Rhodey an’ Rae got with each other in the first place ‘cause they missed the hell outta you. You’re bein’ nasty, to all’ve us, and I ain’t gonna keep my mouth shut about it just ‘cause you been gone.” She wills her lips to stay set in one firm line; she stares right at him, and then she says: “Quit it.”
“I'm—” For a brief second, his eyes flash; his voice raised. Kaylee thinks he’s gonna yell, and as ugly as it all is and as bad of a feeling as it sets to squirming in her chest, she’s almost relieved – Tony’s not okay, he’s really not, and at least when he’s yelling, he’s not pretending nothing ever happened in Serenity Valley.
And then his mouth snaps shut, and she knows: he has closed down again. “Will that be all, Miss Frye?”
She folds her arms. “The hell's that supposed to mean?”
“It means that I think you could use a week’s vacation. Starting an hour ago.”
“...You ain't serious.” Kaylee's initial reaction could have gone a lot of ways, she later figures – mad, rejected, wounded, betrayed – but the first thing she feels is incredulous. “You're changin' the focus of the company entirely and you got no idea what we been doin' lately and you been missing the last three months, and you want me to go have sparkly drinks by a pool somewhere?”
“Yep,” says Tony, pretending to think about it for barely half a second. “That sounds about right.” Kaylee has never seen this expression before on Tony; it's intent and cold. It's like she's looking at a stranger.
She counts to five. She doesn't say the first thing that comes to mind, or the second, or even the third. She stands in the doorway, white and furious (and afraid – I don't wanna leave you alone like this in this big old house, you chŭnrén, she thinks, and lăotiān Yé, what did they do to you), and she says, “I don't particularly wanna talk to you right now,” and she grabs her bag off the nearest table, turns around, and goes up the stairs.
“That's fine by me!” Tony hollers after her.
Upstairs, Kaylee yanks her jacket out of the closet with more force than is strictly required and she jams her sleeves into it. The fountain cascades continually, water tumbling from the second floor to land in the pool on the first. Kaylee stands in the middle of the giant living room and feels very small. He don't mean it, she tells the lump in her throat. He's goin' through a tough time. You don't know what got done to him. You can't help him, and that ain't your fault.
“Jarvis?” she says. Her voice comes out shaky; she clears her throat.
“Yes, Miss Frye?”
“Keep an eye on Tony, would you? I mean – not an eye, not literal-like, but – talk him outta doin' anything dumb.” Who's she kidding; nobody can talk Tony out of doing stupid things, and especially not the artificial intelligence that he created. “Or at least call me if somethin' goes real wrong,” she finishes lamely.
“Certainly, Miss Frye,” Jarvis's voice says. “I'll find you at the usual coordinates?”
“No umbrella drinks or poolboys for me,” she murmurs quietly, and it isn't anywhere near as wistful as it ought to be.
“I'm sorry?”
“Usual coordinates, Jarvis,” Kaylee says, and she doesn't look back as she shuts the enormous front door behind her.
When Kaylee waves Rhodey, it takes four tries to get him on the channel and he only tells her – his voice clipped and his face as serious as she's ever seen it – he can't talk about it.
Tony says, “Hey,” voice low and quiet and distracted, no games and no airs.
“... Wèi,” Kaylee says, equally soft, as she takes the first few slow steps into the cavernous workshop. It's eerily silent. No music, no clanking, no pounding, no talking. Just her heartbeat and the well-oiled quiet whir of Dummy's gears.
Tony stands some fifty feet away, with a table, a desk, some machinery, and some open space separating them; he's barefoot and wearing only sleeping pants, which ain't nothing Kaylee's never seen before. The new part is the glowing blue circle embedded in the center of his chest. She categorizes the parts and the concept in her head lightning fast, without thinking about it. Scrap metal, hurried unprofessional wirework, copper wiring, some kind of glass alloy, palladium, and then she gets stuck on the network of terrible raised scars and blue-purple-black bruises ringing the reactor, and she would swear her own heart stops for a second.
Some of her roiling distress must show through in her expression, because Tony says, “Bù kĕ néng. I'm not gonna explode.” He raps the reactor's faceplate with three knuckles – transparisteel, Kaylee thinks numbly, from the sound of it – and sets down the delicate tool he'd been holding onto. Perched in front of him, its metal “wrist” rotating, Dummy chirps an inquisitive noise, and Tony shakes his head. “All set. Sleep mode.”
As Dummy backs away several feet and powers down with a low whine, Kaylee takes a couple steps forward, her arms crossed over her chest out of some sense of protectiveness; to keep herself from surging forward and touching that reactor all over, getting a sense of how it works and what in the guĭ she can do to improve it so it doesn't hurt him. “You waved me,” she points out, equal parts caution and mulishness.
“I need your hands.” When Kaylee just looks at him, unmoving, he reaches over on the table and picks up another glowing blue hunk of machinery. This one has all the interior tubing and wires spilling out, Tony's literal heart in his own hands. “This,” he lightly shakes the reactor, “is the new model; the one not designed in a cave and built with scraps. It needs to replace the original. My hands are too big for the job, and Dummy's name is Dummy for a reason, so I figured I'd go through the list of people I know who have small hands and probably won't use the opportunity to fry me.”
I bet that's a short list, Kaylee thinks, and then she clutches her bicep, hard, at the cruelty of the stray thought. That last from Tony sounds moderately more like the Tony she knows; it doesn't sound as much like the quiet, subdued stranger who's standing there half-naked in more ways than one. “So you waved me,” she says.
“So I waved you.”
“I ain't a doctor,” she says, uncertain and feeling younger than she has in a long time.
“Good thing I need a mechanic,” Tony tells her, and he stands there, his expression unchanging in the faint blue cast from his chest, and he waits.
“Everything's different, Kaylee,” he says, after she doesn't move. “It all changed; I changed. I can't go back to the way things were before.” His voice is hoarse and more determined than anything she's ever heard out of him.
“What's that mean?” she asks, her eyes on him even as her fingers pluck at her jacket sleeve. There's a thread loose; it'll have to be fixed.
“No more useless gŏu pì. No more weapons that hurt people. I have to do something.” His face is still too thin and shadowed with new hurts that she doesn't know the causes of (but can guess at, and her guesses scare her). Extrapolating from the look of the bags under his eyes, she thinks he probably hasn't slept a wink in the three days since she last saw him.
Kaylee takes several steps toward him, her boots scuffing the floor, and with each step, she sees more and more marks on him that weren't there the morning he left Osiris three months ago, and those observations alone push her around the work table. They can talk crazy sweeping mission statements later, she tells herself. They can talk about that shiny half-healed burn on his arm and the old dark lines across his ribs, about why he isn't wearing his sling anymore, later. “What'm I doin'?” she asks briskly from directly in front of him, her hands half-raised toward his chest, and Tony gives a very contained, very real smile.
“This one,” he grunts, and he puts a hand across the reactor in his chest, gives two tiny twists back and forth, and begins to slowly pull it out of himself, “needs to come out.” Kaylee swallows hard but she sets her jaw against the slick sound it makes and the carnage she's sure she's about to see. When Tony gives a sharp tug to yank it the rest of the way out, though, all she sees is some sort of smooth metal. He must have forged it to exact specifications and used it to line the gaping hole in him, and before she remembers herself, she rests an unsteady hand on his chest, her thumb just over the edge of the metal cylinder. The scars are bumpy and rough, the metal cold. His skin leaps under her fingers but he doesn't step away, even though the sudden stiffness in his posture tells her that he isn't used to being touched and he doesn't like it.
“Now what?” she asks, dropping her hand to her side and looking up at his set face.
“I'll need you to reach in and connect a couple leads.” He gives her the new arc reactor, the sleek one with the perfectly wrapped wire coils and the trailing leads. “Red with red, blue with blue, etcetera with etcetera, without touching the leads to the lining.”
For all the fact that he's asking her to do it, that they spent a thoroughly memorable night exploring each other three months ago and that she's half-lived in his house long enough to see him in incredibly compromising positions, this is the worst. It feels like a violation on the most basic level, reaching straight inside him, and Kaylee freezes, woodenly letting him pass his heart into her hands.
“--Sometime within the next thirty seconds,” Tony says. “Or my heart will stop. Not to rush you here.”
She swallows a sharp intake of breath and, balancing the weight of the device in one hand, takes up the red lead and reaches inside him with the other. There's something slick and slimy coating the walls of the metal lining and she doesn't stop to think about what it is or what she's doing. She just clips the red lead into place and moves on to the blue.
“You should see your face,” says Tony's voice from above her. The rumble inside his chest when he talks is just about the worst gorram thing Kaylee has ever felt. “I'm almost regretting powering down Dummy and his vidcapture function.”
“Don't,” she snaps furiously without looking up – yellow attaches to yellow – and Tony doesn't say anything else. Don't joke about this, she finishes in her head. Don't you try to make it funny that somebody hurt you so bad that I got my arm so far inside you I can't see half of it. Green goes to green, Kaylee's hand only shaking a little, and then the heart lights up blue and glowy and she says, “Okay. Leads're done.”
“Fit it into the socket,” Tony directs, and she does it; she very, very carefully settles it in and on his instruction turns it like the tumbler on a safe to lock it into place, and when she's done, she can't help leaving her fingers there for a few extra seconds. She's making sure it's in okay and that it's working; that his body really is warm under her fingertips and that he's standing here, flawed but real as day. He's looking down at her hands, uncharacteristically quiet and still and serious-faced, and now that the delicate work is over, Kaylee lets her fingers tremble a little.
“I want to have you look at something,” he says, and this time, the buzz of his voice against her hands is the regular kind, not the inside-out one. Her chin rises swiftly, and just as hastily, he adds, “Which is not anywhere on my person.”
“The 'something' you gotta do?” she asks, finally stepping back, out of his space, and folding her arms again.
“Got it in one,” says Tony, and without any preamble (later, she'll think: well, that deserved a hell of a lot more fanfare), he says, “Jarvis, put it up.”
A translucent red image shimmers into being between the two of them. It's taller than Kaylee (just a little taller than Tony) and man-shaped, hovering a few inches off the floor, and Kaylee stares at it.
“Boot thruster jets won't be up to spec for flyin' in the black,” she finally says, automatic, and through the design's slowly rotating helmet, she can see Tony Stark's entire face light up with the force of his grin.
Chinese translations [primarily from here]:
Duìbùqĭ - I'm sorry; excuse me
Bao - A type of steamed, filled bun or bread-like (i.e. made with yeast) item in various Chinese cuisines.
Gŏushĭ - Crap
Yī dà tuó dàbiàn - Big pile of shit
Chŭnrén - Jerk; fool
Lăotiān Yé - Jesus
Wèi - Hey
Bù kĕ néng - Impossible; never going to happen
Guĭ - Hell
Gŏu pì - Bullshit
Notes: Oh, wow. Um. I think I'm done. Only ... a year and eight months after I started. This whole thing is Sweeney's fault, both for prompting me in the first place and then by encouraging me once I started, both directly via words and by indulging me with AU RP shenanigans. (Thanks, Sweeney!) I can't promise I won't come back to this world, since I have a lot of ideas about Tony's three months of captivity (hint: he was held by Dust Devils, and if you've read the Serenity comics, you know the identity of the individual in the crew who was a Dust Devil), what Rhodey and Kaylee were doing during that time, and where the unmentioned Firefly cast of characters can be found in this universe -- and also about what happens next -- but those will likely be one-shots, not 24000-word explosions that take the better part of two years to write. Thanks for reading and not killing me during the epically long waits between chapters!
AND THEN EVERYONE WENT THROUGH THE EVENTS OF IRON MAN, ONLY WITH MORE SPACESHIPS AND COWBOYS.
THE END.
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...and yeah, it's literally four in the morning and I am trying to come up with something besides "I looooooove theeeeeeeeem", and it is not going so well. But I am DELIGHTED. There is extra bitterness! There's Kaylee being capable and only taking as much bullshit as is strictly necessary! And I think my favorite thing about this -- it's pretty easy to tell how they've... reflected on each other? This may be a four-in-the-morning phrasing, but what I mean -- it's all subtle, but you can see how they've changed each other and it's not always for the better except sometimes it is.
ffffff *hugs fic to self* I just. The last scene with the chest thing. That is what I am talking about!
I am so going to reread this in the morning and kick my feet in glee (over fic) and cringe (at this comment), but FFFFF!!!!
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(And, yes, they changed each other, and I am so happy that that came across.)
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AND THEN EVERYONE WENT THROUGH THE EVENTS OF IRON MAN, ONLY WITH MORE SPACESHIPS AND COWBOYS.
THIS IS THE BEST FIC SUMMARY IN THE HISTORY OF THINGS.
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LOFF! This whole thing has been just voice-perfect and has made me *squee* out loud. (which, by the by, my cats would like to inform you is Right Out)
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I missed it when you first started posting but got here just in time for the end, lucky me :)
Thanks for writing this.
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YOU ARE SO STINKING AWESOME, I SQUISH YOU WITH LOVE
ARTEMIS HEADVOICE SAYS :D?no subject
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Yay! :)
Enjoyed this very much, and can't wait for hypothetical future one-shots. :)
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that's brilliant because it fits, of course Tony would get crazy for the just as crazily happy mechanic (Kaylee, oh adorable Kaylee), of course they'd be crazily and fantastically brilliants and the last line is made of AWESOME.
AND THEN EVERYONE WENT THROUGH THE EVENTS OF IRON MAN, ONLY WITH MORE SPACESHIPS AND COWBOYS. I approve of those additions. More spaceships and cowboys goes very well with everything.
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I love it so hard it hurts.
I'll be honest, I got to the end all exited to click for the next part and was very disappointed there wasn't more!
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This is by far the best crossover fic I've ever read-- the two universes meshed so seamlessly that it hardly feels like they weren't meant to bump up against each other someday. Thank you so much for writing this.
I only lament that there's not more Tony/Kaylee fic out there (at least, not that I'm aware of-- I didn't even know I wanted Tony/Kaylee fic before reading this but God help me, I want it now).
I hope that one day you revisit this universe. :) Thanks again for the amazing read.