faderift | open | put my faith in the hard of heart

"Good eye."

Planes, he said, and there's more than a smidge of relief on Howard's end. Maybe Cayley did have to put up with everyone thinking he was talking nonsense, but on top of all of the things he didn't have to put up with, including griffons and glowing hands and alternate worlds, it's too much.

"That was a bedsheet. This—" A narrow metal band, held up and wiggled in view over his shoulder. "—was a broken sword. I had to make a mold out of sand, like some sort of animal."

He deposits the debris on the rock beside him, once it's wound up, and pivots to stand. In middle age his build will pad out to medium. Now, in his twenties, with his linen clothes sticking to his limbs, he's bordering on coltish.

"But it could have been worse. Nobody is dead."

"Yeah. Should get a hold of some sailcloth for mark 2. There's a war? Apparently. So someone'll fund creative ways to get living bodies into, uh..."

Which is when Tony turns his attention up from the tangled mess of fabric and molded metal bands, arms folded and stance only a little precarious on the rocks, and towards the man getting to his feet.

Different. Tony has some very fixed impressions of Howard Stark. White hair, for a lot of the time he remembers most vividly, and pressed suits, and a certain kind of expression reserved only for him. Everything else behind that was just scaffolding. So he thinks of old photographs, the kind he'd pondered with some uneasy curiousity, reluctant interest come too late.

"Uh," he says, again. Uhhh. "Peril."

Good thing this stranger has no frame of reference. Maybe Tony always looks this bewildered.

Howard, wringing water out of one sleeve and oblivious to a long, long list of facts, says, "Good thought."

He says it like he'd already thought of it. Like sharing the same thought as him is what makes it good. A tone learned from walking among Ph.D.s like he owned the place, well before he did actually, literally own the place.

"I thought a proof of concept might get me a budget," he goes on, moving to the other sleeve. "I mean, you can't blame them for thinking I'm insane. If one of them showed up on Earth talking about Blights and. Ah."

He tilts his head to shake water out of one ear.

"Talking about anything they talk about here, I can't say they wouldn't be shot." And they don't know who he is. But maybe Mr. At Least Slightly More Clever Than He Looks With That Expression does, so Howard sticks out a damp hand. "Howard Stark."

"Uh huh."

Tony unsticks from freezeframe to shake hands. "I know. I mean."

Genius strikes, like genius always strikes: unexpected, and a little wild, barely managing to avoid stumbling his words as he adds a cavalier; "Who doesn't. Besides our frolicking friends of fairy forest." It's a bumpy landing, from pure ??? to something resembling any manner of dealing with what's happening

(is this tinnitus that's happening to him right now, or did a corner of his brain fritz out, hard to say)

but he's gotten some practice in, to say the least.

That said, this handshake is going on for a while. "Uhhh Tony. I'm Tony. Rhodes. Potts." That's weird, he regrets it already. "It's a pleasure."

“Sure is,” Howard says, with a slanted smile and slight squint that add up closer to amused appreciation than judgment. Eccentric old men are better, in his very educated and valuable opinion as an eccentric young man, than most of the alternatives.

But he’s still taking his hand back now.

“Rhodes-Potts, huh? Of the Hoboken Rhodes-Potts?” There are no Hoboken Rhodes-Potts, obviously, and the joke is for his own personal benefit, so he speeds ahead and leaves it discarded behind him. “What did you do? Or what did you do, before the—“ He rolls a recollecting hand. “—fairy forest.”

Tony actually does something like an apologetic jazzhands when the handshake is terminated on the late side, and there's an awkwardly overlapped half-laugh at joke that is already left to the wayside. The bumpy landing continues, apparently.

"I, uh." Car salesman. Math teacher. Body double. No one, this isn't happening, it's a dream. "I tinker. Robotics, engines, A.I. Took up a contract or two with Stark Industries, actually."

A smile, more at the eyes. "It's a small multiverse after all."

“Yeah,” Howard says; “yeah.”

A delay.

He hates to say he doesn’t know what someone is talking about—in this specific situation, anyway. When they’re talking about something that matters. He needs a few seconds to be able to stomach it. This, on top of being soaked and attacked by griffons.

But then he waves one finger, spooling an invisible line back in.

“No. Back up. A.I.?”

That wasn't on purpose, somehow. Like maybe the idea of Howard Stark feels as present and live as he does in sepia tinted film reels. That twitch of a smile from before kind of settles, private amusement in spite of himself. In spite of how complicated this is all gonna get because he can't keep his damn! trap! shut! for any real length of time.

"Artificial intelligence," Tony supplies, parting with knowledge easy. "As in, machine intelligence with learning capability, human competencies and computational-- actually, did you ever meet Turing?" A gesture, indicating Howard, lax at the wrist. "He had some neat ideas."

Somewhere in the sky, a griffon screeches.

"We could take this-- I mean, you look like you could use a towel and a drink."

open | put my faith in the hard of heart

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