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Dear Santa,
I can explain.
I didn't mean to break Daddy's toy shelves. I just wanted to make sure everything was clean for Christmas. I didn't know it would fall over. I'm sorry, Santa. None of Daddy's Captain America toys broke, and I put them back on the shelves without Help. Mommy says it's okay cause I didn't mean to, but just in case she let Mr. Burlay (Daddy's lawer) make up this paper that says it wasn't my fault and it won't make me Naughty on your List.
I have also sent AFADAVITS of Goodness from Mommy and Jarvis (he's our Buttler) and Mr. Burlay and Mrs. Que from School. They all say I have been VERY GOOD all year. I ate my veggitables and cleaned my room and was Polite and I gave my Piggy Bank to the man with the bell outside. I didn't get in trouble at ALL this year. Mommy says I've been so good, you are sure to bring me anything I want for Christmas.
Santa, for Christmas, I want Captain America to come home. I want him to give me a piggy back ride and to hear how he fought Red Skull cause and I want to have hot cocoa with him and then me and him and Jarvis and Mommy and Daddy can go fight Highdra together.
So please bring Captain America home for Christmas. I don't want anything else, not a bike or a robot or ANYTHING. Just that.
Thank you.
Tony StarK
P.S. Cookies are by the tree, and carrots for Dasher, and an apple for Captain America cause Daddy said he likes apples.
Howard read through the letter twice, making sure to keep his face suitably grave. He had to blink once, but otherwise his eyes only burned a little. At his feet, Tony stood up straight and tall as a four year old could. He'd already sent a Letter to Santa the year before, Maria had said, so Howard had been vaguely expecting it to happen that year as well. It was the sort of thing people asked about whenever Tony came up in conversation. Even Tony had to be normal in some ways.
What he hadn't been expecting was for Maria to march Tony into his home office on December 1st, letter at the ready. She stood behind Tony, one hand on his shoulder proudly. Between the two of them, Howard didn't know what to say. Why hadn't Tony, of all kids, come with an instruction manual? Or at least an emergency hotline?
"Tony," he said as gently as he could, "I'm not sure Santa can do this. It's a big order, and he's a busy guy."
The bad news didn't seem to faze Tony a jot. He kept staring upward, chin set and brown eyes determined. His face was scrubbed, even behind his ears, and Maria had put him in one of his good button-up shirts. Even his pants had been ironed, which no one bothered with except for special occasions. "It's Santa Claus. He can do anything. Jarvis said."
"I..." Kneeling down to the beige carpet, Howard clasped his son's shoulder and tried to smile. No one had told him it would be this hard. "I'll make sure Santa gets your letter, but don't get your hopes up, alright? We can't have everything we want all the time."
"You'll deliver it in person, right?" Tony pleaded, folding his hands together. "You have to make really sure he gets it. He has to get it."
"I'll hand it to him the very next time I see him," Howard promised solemnly. "But remember, he might not be able to—"
"He will."
No arguing with a determined four year old. Howard patted his shoulder and glanced up. Maria had a smile on, so maybe he hadn't screwed up too much. "If you say so, kiddo. Why don't you go help Jarvis with the tree? Santa can't deliver anything without a good tree."
Tony beamed with all the spirit and glee of a kid who'd apparently been working all year for one sure-fire shot at a gift, then turned and scrambled for the door. Howard stared down at the letter in his hands again, slipping it back into its envelope as he rose to his feet.
Maybe he shouldn't have told Tony all those stories about Steve. But he didn't want Steve to just die and vanish. There weren't enough people left who remembered him—mostly they'd died in the war, and the few people who hadn't didn't talk about him much. Good role model or not, might have been better to let him idolize someone like Superman or Peggy Carter, someone who wasn't going to break his heart one day.
Maria cleared her throat. She hadn't left with Tony, still standing in the exact same place with her hands clasped. "So what are you going to do?"
"Nothing." Howard flipped the envelope over so he couldn't see the hopefully scrawled Santa Claus on the front. "Boy has to learn that he can't have everything he wants."
"We could hire an impersonator," Maria pressed, a frown pursing her lips. "He wouldn't know the difference."
I would. "No. He'll be fine. Kids are resilient."
Her face set stubbornly, but she nodded and turned away. Howard sighed and turned back to his desk. He put the letter into the same file folder he kept for Tony's report cards and crayon schematics, the odds and ends memorabilia of childhood.
No more stories about Captain America. Four was too old for that sort of thing anyway. Tony would understand one day.
"Oh, Tony."
Maria sighed and leaned against the wall, hand pressed to her mouth, and wished she brought a camera with her. By the tree, the blanket-wrapped bundle that was her son slept on, cozy and oblivious to anything other than his dreams. Under him, Howard's replica of Captain America's shield gleamed with a fresh layer of polish, just the right size for a small boy to turn over and curl up in.
She'd known she should have been suspicious when Tony had volunteered to go to bed early, but she'd assumed it was a Santa thing. Early to bed, early to rise and scramble for the tree. That had been her childhood, and she didn't see why Tony would be different.
He'd been good all year—she'd signed an affidavit to prove it, after all. It was just another night in a pattern that she'd gotten too used to. His terrible twos had been awful, and three hadn't been much better. (None of them would ever recover from the fish tank incident, least of all the fish.) For so much effort, Christmas should have been extra special, not something that he woke up to find his parents fixing. Not so young.
Behind her, a flashbulb went off. Maria stiffened and turned, shielding her eyes automatically against the next flash. "If you wake him up, God help me..." she hissed.
Howard grinned behind the camera and leaned in for a kiss, one arm slipping around her waist. The lights from the tree danced in his hair, catching the odd bit of silver. "He'll sleep through anything," he promised in a whisper.
"That's what you said on our anniversary," Maria grumbled, but she leaned in for another kiss anyway. Kisses had been just one of the reasons she'd fallen for Howard. That and the way he handled multiphase thermodynamics. It was hard to resist a man who was so handy with physics. "Where's Jarvis?"
In answer, Howard nodded at the living room. Maria turned to see Jarvis in a Santa suit make his way from the foyer with a bright red velvet sack. If she hadn't known to expect him, she never would have pinged it for Jarvis.
He was definitely better at it than Howard, who'd tried to make the whole thing science rather than magic and never listened when she tried to say that Santa didn't need iron reindeer, of all things, he had his own. Howard was the sort who needed to touch something, to hold it in his hands to believe in it, and would never stop finding excuses for what he couldn't prove. The gifts that neither of them bought were assigned to Jarvis, or her parents, or faulty memory, no matter how Maria argued for a more esoteric explanation. It was endearing and maddening and she loved every argument, but it would have been better assigned to anything but Santa Claus.
Settling back against Howard, Maria watched as Jarvis distributed the gifts under the tree, filled the stocking, and pocketed a few of the cookies, the carrots and the apple. Then he scooped Tony up, shield and all, and carted him up the garland-bedecked stairs. It took a few nudges, but Howard snapped more pictures as they went. They'd probably end up stored in some file, since neither she nor Howard were very good at remembering to put them in albums, but at least they'd have them, which was the important part.
Maria closed her eyes against the lights and the glitter. She loved the glitz of the holidays, but she loved Howard more. "Do you think he'll be okay in the morning?"
"He'll be fine." Howard squeezed her around the middle and pressed a kiss to her ear. "Kids are resilient. By morning, he'll be too excited for his new toys to care about that letter."
"NO NONONONONONO NO—"
"Tony, please—" Mommy begged, putting her hands over his mouth, but Tony yanked away and kept screaming.
He didn't want a robot dinosaur, he didn't want a bike, he didn't want the game system or the tool set or the drafting table, and he couldn't understand why his parents thought he should be happy for them. All he'd asked for, the only thing in the whole world that he wanted for Christmas was Captain America, and Santa hadn't delivered. He'd taken the cookies and the carrots and even the apple—the Captain's apple, not Santa's—and made off like a thief. It didn't matter that he'd left toys behind, he hadn't left the one thing Tony wanted. His lungs hurt and his face was hot and he couldn't breathe through the snot in his nose anymore, and none of it mattered because Captain America wasn't there.
In the middle of taking a breath for another shriek, Daddy whipped him around by the shoulder and swatted him hard on his pajama'd butt. It was enough to sting, and make Tony lose all the breath he'd drawn. Before he could work up another really good one, his father said, "Anthony Edward Stark, that is enough out of you, young man. What do you think Santa would think of this?"
It was the You're In Trouble Voice, the one he usually saved for when Tony had broken the fish tank or exploded the car tires or melted the silverware. Sniffing deep to clear his nose, Tony glared. He wasn't going to be broken by the Voice. The worst thing in the world had happened and nothing else mattered. "I don't care, I hate Santa! I hate him!"
"You don't mean that," Mommy said sternly. She knelt down in front of him, still wearing the pretty purple robe that Jarvis had helped Tony pick out for her. "We told you that Santa couldn't bring Captain America. Why don't you play with your toys? You'll feel better."
"He could!" Tony insisted at the top of his lungs. If there was nothing else he could do, he'd make sure everyone knew how horrible everything was. "He could bring Captain America! He could, and he didn't because Santa's a bad man and I hate him!"
"That's it." Mommy took him by the hand and pulled him toward the stairs. Obstinately, Tony went limp, forcing her to either pick him up or drag him. She chose to pick him up, dangling him in her arms like a rag doll. "You're going to your room, and you're going to sit there until you calm down and write a letter to tell Santa you're sorry for saying all these mean things."
"I'm not sorry. I'm not I'm not I'm not!" Tony yelled as loudly as he could while hanging upside down by his waist. As Mommy carried him up the stairs, he watched Daddy collecting the gifts back up. Good. Maybe they'd send them back to Santa, so he'd know how angry Tony was.
He was going to be the naughtiest boy ever, and serve Santa right for being mean and not giving him Captain America. That would show them. He'd never be nice again.
December 1st, 2011
Pepper sneezed as yet another plastic-sealed box sent up a cloud of dust when she opened it, making Dummy hoot over her shoulder and try to wave it away. Once they'd found out that SHIELD had so many of Howard Stark's old things, it had taken three court orders and a small country worth of lawyers to get them back. But she'd pried at it until Fury had been forced to give up everything that wasn't classified, which was a surprising amount.
Most of it was made useless by age or confiscated parts, but Pepper had made it her solemn duty to put on her worst clothes and catalog each and every bit of it, and then make SHIELD account for the missing pieces. If nothing else, it made her a pain in Fury's backside, which was compensation enough for the whole mess with making Natalie—Natasha—spy on them. Without hair to tell by, she'd settle for causing a few new wrinkles.
She sorted through it all deftly, making sure to keep everything sorted as it had been. Folders, receipts, plans, half-finished experiments—everything in the world, it seemed. And, in one particular box, nothing but Tony. Pictures, report cards, vaccinations and, at the very bottom, there was a faded red envelope.
Santa Claus, #1 Candycane Lane, North Pole. Just like everything else, Pepper peeled it open and pulled out the papers inside, reading.
"Hey, Pep, how's the dumpster dive going?" Inevitably, Tony poked his head in, just when she'd found something good. He had a sixth sense for timing his interruptions. Since she'd last seen him he'd taken time to put on a clean shirt, but there were still stains on his jeans from whatever he'd been doing in the lab. "Was it Colonel Mustard under the stairs with the parlor maid?"
"No, not a colonel," Pepper said slowly, rereading the letter with a smile. "More like a captain."
"A captain," Tony repeated after her, eyebrows pinched in confusion.
"Under the Christmas tree," she added, holding up the letter just to see the slowly dawning horror in Tony's eyes. "With a shield."
"Oh God," Tony groaned, putting one hand to his forehead and holding the other up. "I can explain. Really."
"You were a Junior Howling Commando?" she demanded gleefully, clutching the letter close. "You never said. Did you have the shield and helmet? I bet you did." She could picture it, the little boy in the pictures with a hand-painted shield, with the winged helmet and maybe a chest full of badges. Or maybe he had the full replica set, the Starks would have been able to afford them.
"It wasn't official or anything, I was just—you know, a fan." Tony shrugged awkwardly and stuffed his hands in his pocket. "Dad had friends who'd come by. Told stories from the war, that sort of thing. Kid stuff. It's no big deal."
Pepper sniffed and folded the letter back into its envelope. "Well, I think it's adorable, and it's a shame it was never sent." Everything else was back in the box already, so she handed Dummy the last folder before standing. Her knees cracked horribly and her rear end had gone numb. Carefully, she wobbled her way over to the lone table in the room and tucked the envelope into the day planner in her purse.
Just as soon as she put it in, Tony suddenly appeared behind her, reaching for the planner. "Hold—wait wait wait, what are you doing with that?"
Casually, Pepper lifted her purse overhead, and hoped Tony wouldn't press too hard for it. She didn't feel like making an end-run for the door. "What do you think I'm going to do? I'm going to mail it."
"What do you mean, mail it?" Tony hadn't sounded that panicked since she'd told him that she knew who Natasha really was. He bounced for it, but Pepper just stretched higher, taking shameless advantage of her extra inches on him. They weren't much, but she wasn't above using them. "You can't mail it, it's—it's ancient, it's from the seventies for God's sake Pepper don't do this to me Pepper please Pepper Pepper Pepper Pepper Pepper—"
"Tony." The repetitions of her name were starting to be timed with the bouncing. On a long shot, Pepper put a hand on Tony's forehead and pinned him in place. As if motion were tied to mouth, he shut up at the same time he slowed down. "Breathe. It's just a letter. Macy's will stamp it and send it back with a card signed Mr. & Mrs. Claus."
"But it just a stupid letter." The disdain in Tony's voice was only matched by his increasing efforts to climb her. His knee jabbed her in the hip as he tried to monkey his way up. Over his shoulder, Dummy hooted worriedly, clearly not understanding why the fleshy ones were being strange. "You'll break their—just throw it away, alright?"
"Throw it away?" Pepper wobbled as Tony's struggle to reach her purse started to throw her off-balance. Twisting around, she squirmed enough to get her free elbow into his ribs. Dummy's hoots started to crow increasingly shrill. "Are you—okay, fine, if it means that much to you, I'll throw it away. You big baby."
"It doesn't mean anything to me, I just don't—" Tony grunted and stumbled back, then fought for purchase again. "I don't want to waste your time."
"You don't want—" Pepper folded over with laughter.
Tony took advantage of the moment to crawl onto her back, stretching for the purse. Shorter he might have been, but Tony had a lot of muscle on her, and only one foot on the ground. She grunted and tried to shake him off, but they both went down in a tangle of arms and legs to the sound of Dummy screeching.
"Ow," Tony moaned from somewhere between her shoulder blades. "You should have just given me the letter."
Pepper jabbed her elbow back, hoping to force him to back off. Her nose was squished against the carpet and Dummy's noises had reached migraine-inducing levels. The corner of her purse dug into her breast painfully, but Tony had her too pinned to move it. "You should have not tried to steal my purse," she shot back. "I said I'd throw it away."
Predictably, Tony made no real effort to lift himself off of her. From the way he wiggled, she was pretty sure he was angling to snatch her purse as soon as she moved. "But you were keeping it away—no no no bad robot—"
Fffffffffft
A spray of cold water hit Pepper in the back of her head. Tony squalled like the two year old he really was deep down and flailed. It finished squishing her down against the now sopping carpet. Dummy hooted and kept spraying them, having decided to take matters into his own hands.
Sighing, Pepper went limp and concentrated on shielding her purse from the water while Tony dealt with the robot.
It was going to be one of those days.
Natasha raised both eyebrows when Pepper dropped down into the chair across from her and proceeded to collapse dramatically forward onto the table, hair spread out over her shoulders and face. Silently, she pressed a gingerbread latté into Pepper's hand, then took hold of the other. "Bad day?"
Pepper pulled the latté up close, nestling her cheek against the probably-not-as-eco-friendly-as-it-claimed sleeve. For their Official Holiday Shopping Trip for Coworkers, Friends, People They Respect (and Clint), she'd worn a suitably festive green top under her coat, but what usually would have made Pepper look fabulous just made her look tired. "Tony."
That was all Natasha needed to hear. She squeezed Pepper's hand affectionately. "Offer's still on the table."
"And the answer's still no." After a bit of a struggle, Pepper managed to work herself upright enough to take a sip of her coffee. Her eyes closed in a moment of unadulterated bliss. "You can't kill him. I like him."
"You like that mangy cat of yours too," Natasha had to point out. The last time she had stayed at Pepper's penthouse apartment, she'd woken up with cat vomit in her shoes and a face full of claws. But at least Puss was nice to Pepper, because he loved her. With Tony, him loving you was the start of the problems, not the shield from them. "What caused the trouble this time?"
"Nothing, really." Pepper pulled her hand free from Natasha's to slump against it, making a face. Her hair laid flat, as if she hadn't quite bothered to blow dry it all the way. "I was going through some of his father's old things and found something embarrassing. You know how he gets."
"I know how he gets," Natasha grimaced. That had been half the problem with the palladium poisoning. Fury had dropped tank-sized hints on Tony for a month and gotten nowhere before deploying her to ride herd. She'd been two days away from forcing him to look at the research at gun-point when his birthday party happened.
Some days, she wasn't sure she was glad it hadn't come to that or not. Holding a gun on Tony would have been incredibly satisfying.
Pepper was starting to look a little livelier, caffeine brightening her eyes and making her smile more. She ducked her head and reached into her purse, pulling out her massive, leather-bound planner. With a flip of her fingers, she unsnapped it and pulled out a faded old red envelope. "You should see it, though. It's adorable. I wish I could mail it."
Curiosity getting the better of her, Natasha accepted the envelope with only a token, automatic check for contact poisons. Not that Pepper would hurt her—if she ever wanted someone dead, Natasha had her pegged as a knife type of woman—but good habits were kept through practice. Good habits like breathing.
The letter itself was a little odd, though the legal documents that came with it were amusing. Requesting Captain America for Christmas was unusual, but she'd once asked Santa for a real gun (and had received it, much to her grandmother's dismay), so who was she to judge? Her parents had acted surprised too, but she assumed her mother had snuck it into the gifts. She flicked it around in her fingers, examining it from every angle."Cute. Why not send it?"
"I promised." One of Pepper's shoulders moved in a shrug.
"Huh. A shame." If Pepper didn't do anything Tony didn't want, the world would fall into chaos inside a week. Putting the letter back in its envelope, she let it drop down into the bag at her feet and leaned forward. "Where did you want to shop first? Macy's has a sale right now."
Predictably, Pepper agreed, since Macy's was one of her dedicated shopping spots. They finished their coffee, picked up some cheesecake bites to go, and away they went to Macy's. At the first sight of one of the cheery red mailboxes, Natasha took a side-step to pretend to investigate the sweaters next to it, slipping Tony's letter into the box behind the cover of a particularly ghastly tangerine one.
What would Pepper ever do without her?
"I'm telling you, there's nothing I can do," Nicolas snapped as the Prince of Atlantis followed him around the toyshop, dripping on equipment and generally making a mess of everything. It seemed like Christmas got earlier every year, and since duties had passed to him from Odin a few centuries back, it had just been getting more hectic every decade. He didn't have time to deal with whiny Princes demanding that he do something with their chunks of ice.
"You are Santa Claus! The spirit of giving!" Namor insisted, dodging a trio of engineer elves. "You cannot give a man his life back?"
"Not unless he's a lot younger than he looks. My magic works for children only, and you know that." Nick checked on the progress of iPods and Stark-pads in the tech center, but didn't go farther than the door. Damned things were touchy enough to make without raising copyright issues, he didn't need Namor dripping on them with only a week to go before delivery.
Down on the production floor, his wife Anne was helping the elves with some of the more delicate work. For the holidays, she'd put on a pretty red dress and had pulled her blonde hair back with a twist of holly. She looked up and smiled, waving cheerily.
As always, Namor leered down at her until she pointedly looked away, bringing cheer to Nick's heart. "Your wife deserves better than a man who would let this opportunity pass him by."
"That's not helping your cause." Someone tugged at his sleeve from behind and offered a clipboard. Without looking, Nick signed his name and accepted the handful of letters. "I can only work my magic to give a gift to children. Without a— what is this?" Nick frowned down at the collection of letters. It smelled like cookies, which wasn't unusual since the elves sorted out any Naughties, which generally left a ragtag mix of Good and Goodish, but somewhere in the mix was a faint hint of high-quality sherry. A Nice?
Nice children were exceptionally rare, the ones who had behaved nearly perfectly for an entire year. Most children only made an effort in December, and occasionally November, earning them the perfectly respectable Good. But Nice...
Kids being what they were, he hadn't smelled a Nice letter yet this year.
Ignoring Namor's annoyed grumbles and occasional glances down at Anne, Nick sifted through the letters, giving each a good sniff. Gingerbread, sugar cookie, chocolate chip, gingerbread—gingerbread and sherry, aha! The letter in question was old and battered, and had probably been set off course for quite some time. But letters to Santa didn't have an expiration date. Peeling it open, he glanced at the papers before homing in on the letter. His eyebrows rose as he read, eyes twinkling.
Nicolas loved Christmas miracles. Especially when they were done by other people. "Prince, I think I might be able to help you after all."
'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the penthouse not a creature was stirring...
Except the artificial intelligence, who was quiet as a mouse.
JARVIS hummed to himself as he adjusted the temperature, the background noise, and the general level of merriment in the decorative lights. Mr. Stark had fallen asleep on the sofa before the tree, sleepless nights and alcohol having overcome his intentions to, as he put it, "stand watch". Mr. Stark had been putting himself through more strain than usual this season. So far as it was possible for an artificial intelligence to feel anything, JARVIS had worried for him. Long nights researching history seventy years gone couldn't have been healthy for a man with his heart condition.
A nudge of programming sent Dummy, ever faithful, to cover their creator up with a cheery quilt. The robot hooted softly as he tugged the blanket over Mr. Stark's sprawled body. Then Dummy rolled over to his docking station by the tree and settled in to recharge.
Programming was an odd and wonderful thing. When designing them, Mr. Stark had been thorough in his specifically scientific way. Understandably, that meant that he had programmed all of his personal systems to respond only to actual threats. Imaginary ones, of course, were no true danger at all. Above all, JARVIS was designed to use his own judgment in most matters.
And so it was that when the large, jolly elf popped out of the heating ducts carrying a bag full of toys at three fifty-one in the morning, JARVIS ran through his database, compared files, and finally took no action. Santa Claus, to his mind, was clearly not a concern.
Santa put up stockings by the tree and filled them with items JARVIS could only glimpse, but which mostly seemed to be electronics. Then he poked around the tree, the decorations and, oddly, the side table. Dummy lifted his head and buzzed, getting a pat as St. Nicolas passed by him. Whatever Santa was looking for, he didn't find it, but he sat down the bag and started to dig through it. It seemed to JARVIS that Dummy thought for a moment, processors whirling at incredibly high speeds, before he undocked himself and rolled into the kitchen where he started to dig through cabinets at an alarming rate.
Dividing his focus, JARVIS monitored their Supernatural Guest as he pinged Dummy's programming. As a first attempt, Dummy was very direct in his artificial thoughts and usually easy to read, but this time his RAM was stuffed too full for JARVIS to make any sense of it. All the main AI could do was watch in frustration as Dummy tore apart the kitchen unit.
"Ho, ho, ho, here we go," Santa muttered, reaching shoulder-deep into his velvet bag with both arms. He heaved, struggling mightily, and JARVIS considered assisting him, but assisting the non-existent was impossible enough that his programming settled for merely monitoring. When the "gift" was pulled out, JARVIS' electronic eyebrows rose.
Back in the kitchen, Dummy had found whatever it was the silly robot had been looking for. He arranged it on a tray furtively, angled so that JARVIS couldn't see precisely what he was doing. Then he sped back into the den, wheels squeaking, and whined for attention. The tray turned out to hold what was, in JARVIS' opinion, a vastly oversized glass of sherry and a plate of cookies.
Santa looked up from arranging his gift. "Now that's more like it." He took the tray, helping himself to one of the cookies and a swallow of liquor. Merry blue eyes roamed up and down Dummy, and JARVIS definitely recorded a deep sniff. Dummy chattered at him softly, head bobbing.
"Yes, I can see that," Santa agreed between bites, nodding. "You've been a good boy this year, haven't you? I remember your letter." Then, to JARVIS' amazement, he turned back to his bag. This time the reach wasn't so far before he pulled out a bright red and green fire extinguisher and hooked it to Dummy's body.
That very nearly made JARVIS protest. Mr. Stark had denuded Dummy of all such items since the Incident of December 1, with the implication that he would not be receiving another. It was difficult to accept that an Imaginary Figure could possibly supersede their creator's authority. On the other console, however, Dummy had been exceptionally hurt by the lacking, and one of JARVIS' primary functions was to care for the well-being of all household residents. It only took a moment's redefinition to include Dummy's emotional state in that category.
Along with the extinguisher, Santa pulled a hat just like his out of the bag and sat it atop Dummy's head. "Merry Christmas." Dummy rolled in circles happily, head bobbing and weaving to make the hat bounce. Santa ho ho ho'd at him, stomach wobbling like the proverbial jelly. "Go back to bed, scamp."
With one last circle, Dummy retreated to his dock and settled back in, but JARVIS could tell that his processors didn't slow. He was going to be incorrigible for weeks.
St. Nick finished arranging the gift, polished off the cookies and sherry, and made his slightly inebriated way back to the heating duct. Laying his finger aside his nose, he seemed to squeeze inward, and then vanished up the vent.
On the roof sensors, JARVIS recorded footsteps and a crunch of snow. Then, in the distance, sleigh bells.
Sunlight. Tony hated sunlight. Especially this type of sunlight. It was bright and clear and disgustingly cheery. He didn't want to be cheery, he want to be asleep, just like everyone else with two ounces of common sense and twelve ounces of alcohol.
Groaning against the hangover headache, Tony rolled over to press his face into the cushions. As an added effort, he pulled the blanket over his head. Cold air drifted up from a gap in the foot. Grumpily, he curled up, trying to close the gap by tucking the blanket under his feet, but that just yanked it down and left his face uncovered. The back and forth went on, shoulders and ankles and, after one particularly frustrating twist, ass all ended up chilled to various degrees before he gave up. Rolling over, Tony collapsed onto his back, glaring up at the ceiling. The sunlight had won.
Worse than just winning, it was Christmas Morning Sunlight. Losing to that was a special blow. If he looked out the window, there'd probably be snow, and children playing with brand new toys, and couples being ridiculously in love. Well, more accurately, there would be scattered dots that might have been those things, since he was twenty-seven stories up, but they were definitely somewhere. All of which, on a normal day, Tony was entirely for, but Christmas was special, as everyone always told him.
"Bah," Tony grumbled to himself. If Pepper hadn't made such a big deal about that stupid letter, he wouldn't have had to drink himself to sleep on Christmas Eve. At least, he wouldn't have done it alone. Normally Tony was able to avoid the worst of the holiday spirit, but not this year. He'd brooded. It made him feel like an absolute scrooge, instead of just a grouch.
Wheels whirred, and suddenly something was blocking his view of the ceiling. Dummy's head bounced, as if his optical sensors weren't located down in his main body. Somewhere, he'd gotten a damned Santa hat. Probably Pepper, Tony never bought that shit. The only reason he even decorated was because people expected it, and having to explain that you didn't believe in Christmas was one of the fastest ways to end a one night stand in progress that Tony had ever discovered. Lazily, Tony snatched at the hat, but Dummy moved every time, and Tony was too hungover to try more than three times.
"Merry Christmas, sir," JARVIS said quietly, with unusual care for Tony's hangover. "The temperature is twenty five degrees outside. Ten centimeters of snow fell overnight and your gift is located under the tree and appears to be thawing rapidly. Body temperature is eighty-six point seven and rising. All indications point to a state of hibernation induced by extremely low temperatures. All bodily signs show full recovery imminent. I have already composed an email to Colonel Fury which can be sent at your convenience."
Gift? Fury? Body temperature It was too damned Christmas to make sense of that. Rocking slowly, Tony eventually managed to lever himself upright without puking. "What the hell are you—" His arguments died a slow death on his lips. "... JARVIS?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Why is there a blond under my tree?" Not that it was the first time Tony had woken up with a blond he didn't remember going to bed with, but usually there was a bed involved somewhere, and much fewer pieces of clothing.
"Santa Claus, I believe, sir. He visited in the night, bringing various forms of merriment and Yuletide spirit."
"... okay then." Santa had brought him a blond. A blond that was the spitting image of Captain America from his dad's old reels, down to the stupid wings painted on the side of his helmet. Also, a shield. There was a shield. A really fucking familiar shield. Tony rubbed his face, in case it vanished, but no. There was still a Captain America impersonator and shield under his tree.
The bow wrapped around his neck wasn't actually that new, though he hadn't seen that one since Christmas of '98. And back then the bow hadn't been around his neck.
Christmas. It's all Christmas' fault. That was the only thing Tony could think of to explain it. The holiday spirits had finally ganged up on him to drive him crazy.
The blond guy seemed out of it, so Tony staggered over to the shield. There were scorch marks, but no dents, making it one of the more accurate recreations Tony had ever seen. Usually they went for the shiny-clean version from the propaganda shots. It looked like someone had tried to repaint it, but the metal just hadn't taken to whatever they'd used. It flaked off when he touched it, while the older paint held steady.
"Someone spent a fortune on you, buddy," Tony told the unconscious man as he picked the shield up and flipped it around. Solid metal, but light as hell, lighter than anything he'd ever held that hadn't also been flimsy. Painted face instead of any sort of enamel, and worn leather straps.
Snorting, Tony rapped the face with his knuckles. It echoed, but that was the only effect. Frowning, Tony did again, harder. Still only noise. Impossible... "JARVIS, scan this thing. What's it made of?" Probably just the hangover screwing with him, it had to be. There was no way it was—
"The shield appears to be an alloy of steel and Wakandan vibranium. Structural composition indicates other substances—"
Tony stopped listening. There was only one person in the world with a shield made out of a functional steel-vibranium alloy. "I'll be damned," he breathed, running his fingers over the face of the shield. "Maybe you're forgiven, old man."
"Sir?" JARVIS asked, sounding curious.
Suddenly, he had the most impossible urge to run around the room screaming Santa came, Santa came! Under the tree, Captain America—Captain America, oh my God, Captain America!—was starting to stir. Not at all like a mouse. More like a man waking up after sixty-six years asleep. Very gently, Tony set the shield down against the wall. Later, darling, later. "JARVIS, hold that email. I don't want anyone to find out about my—gift. Dummy, go make coffee—no, cocoa, people do cocoa on Christmas, don't they? With marshmallows, I know we have some somewhere."
"Right you are, sir," JARVIS agreed, while Dummy wheeled into the kitchen. Somewhere, he'd gotten a shiny new fire extinguisher.
Better not to ask.
Instead, Tony worked on dragging the Captain out from under the tree. It wasn't easy. Besides being two hundred pounds of solid muscle, a rapturous fanboy in the back of his head was busy keeping tally of the whole situation. And now I'm touching his boots, I'm touching Captain America's boots oh my God oh my God and that's his ankle, and his knee and and and oh my God his cheek touched my carpet I'm never having this cleaned ever again. It was ridiculous and undignified, and Tony was glad that telepathy was something that happened to people he didn't know, because he'd never have lived it down.
He felt like a little geekboy again, learning the wonders of magnesium.
Captain America's uniform looked kind of banged up, a little singed and a lot ice-damaged. Which made sense, from what Tony remembered of his father's stories. His plane had gone down in the Arctic, and that was where most of Stark Industrial's searches had gone.
Near the North Pole, the fanboy squeaked.
If his inner child kept it up, Tony was going to drown him in eggnog.
Dummy rolled up with a tray of cocoa—two cups on a warmer, that was thoughtful. Accepting his mug graciously, Tony settled down by Cap to wait. It wasn't long, only about half a cocoa before he started to stir. White-blond lashes fluttered, slowly slipping open to show off the most gorgeous set of baby blues Tony had ever seen this early in the morning.
"Welcome to the future. Cocoa?" Tony held out the mug. It was one of the Christmas ones someone had given him ages ago. Mandy, Mindy, Moira—some with an M-name at least. She'd done pottery.
It had a reindeer.
For once, Tony wasn't even going to glare at it.
Captain America blinked in fuzzy confusion. "Cocoa? I..." He struggled to sit up, looking around the den and letting Tony shove the cocoa into his hand. "Where am I? What do you mean, future?"
"I mean..." Since he probably wasn't going to get another chance, Tony leaned to snatch a kiss. Cap's lips were chapped and a little cold, but he kissed back, eyes huge and shocked. In the back of Tony's head, the fanboy screamed like a teen girl at an Elvis concert and then fell suspiciously silent. Either it was a blackout orgasm or Tony had given his inner child a heart attack.
Pulling away from the kiss, Tony grinned again and raised his cocoa in a toast. "Merry Christmas."