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The hood being yanked off his head was closely followed by the sound of a metal door clanging shut. Justin scrambled to his feet, surprised that he could, and spun around to face the door.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Hey! I want my lawyer! I have rights! I want to talk to whoever’s in charge here! Hey!”
“Justin?” a voice croaked behind him, and he spun around again, squeaking.
“Tony?” he asked, voice most certainly not breaking on the high pitch fear had put into his voice. “What are you doing here?”
“How about less questions and more untying me?”
“Oh, right.” He had just been about to do that. Stark was just impatient. Not… not that he could blame him, being strung up on some kind of… holy hell, was that a St. Andrew’s cross? Well, at least Stark sill had all his clothes on. Justin shuddered as he undid the restraints, and managed to mitigate Stark’s fall rather neatly when he collapsed onto Justin’s chest.
“Thanks,” he said, and Justin couldn’t hear a hint of sarcasm. Still. It had to be there. This was Stark, and Stark hated him. Which was fine, because he hated Stark right back.
“What do they want? Who are they? Why are you here?”
Stark looked up from where he was rubbing feeling back into his wrists.
“Have you ever heard of Advanced Idea Mechanics?”
“What? No! Maybe…”
Stark sighed.
“They mentioned you, but I was hoping they were bluffing. Tell me you didn’t…”
“They needed marketing, I needed… well, I didn’t need new ideas, but—”
“Hammer, A.I.M. is an underground terrorist organization that uses technology to try to bring down governments.”
Justin felt his mouth moving while nothing came out, and eventually he forced out, “Well… I… didn’t know that.”
Stark didn’t even roll his eyes, he just sighed.
“They want me to improve on their designs, but I’ve been stalling as much as I can until the others figure out where I am. You wouldn’t happen to have a cell phone on you, would you?”
Justin’s hands went to his pockets, but they were empty. He made an impatient noise and dug through all his pockets. They’d left him his suit jacket, but they’d even taken his wallet.
“I don’t have anything.”
“You have a watch,” Tony pointed out. Justin looked down at his wrist, blinking.
“Oh,” he said. Then he recovered and said dismissively, “Well, that doesn’t do us any good—”
“Give it here, I can work with it. What brand are your glasses?”
“My—my glasses?” Justin repeated, feeling, as always, about three steps behind Stark. “7th Son.”
“Well, whatever, give them here,” Stark said, already dismantling his watch.
“But… but I can’t see without them,” he pointed out reasonably, though somehow his voice came out soft and weak.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Stark said, rolling his eyes and pinning him with a sharp look, “I didn’t know you wanted to stay and enjoy the view. I guess I’ll leave you to it, then.”
Justin felt his legs give out, feeling as though he was dreaming. Things were happening to him, but at a remove. The tears running down his face were just a fact to be noted, not something he was directly experiencing. Stark was staring at him incredulously, but Justin just sat there and waited for the ringing in his ears to go away.
“I don’t want to die,” he admitted, since Stark was going to laugh at him anyway. “I… you spent three months in a cave, but I’ve never even been camping. They’ll break me, and I’ll tell them everything. I’m just—”
“Hey,” Stark’s voice came, and then he felt hands on him, grounding him, tipping his face to look up at Stark, stupid Stark, always one step ahead, always getting the love, the girls, the recognition. What was so different about them anyway? Why was Stark the golden child and not him? But his eyes were strong, and he was offering some of that strength to Justin. “Come on, stay with me, Hammer. We’re getting out of here together, you and me, okay? I’m going to use your watch and your glasses and a couple of gizmos I managed to steal to make a little radio. It’s not much but it should be able to broadcast a signal, and hopefully, if all goes well, we’ll be back in California by the weekend.”
“The weekend,” Justin repeated weakly. “I don’t even know what day it is.”
“Eh, me neither. I have people for that sort of thing. Here, start stripping these wires.” And Stark shoved a handful of colorful wires into his hands, along with a small, jagged piece of metal. Justin bent to his task, coming back to himself as he worked.
“How do you plan to make a radio out of a watch and a pair of glasses?” he demanded when he’d regained his composure, because Stark was a weapons designer, not MacGuyver. Also because he refused to admit that he’d just cried in front of Tony Stark. “You don’t even have a power source.”
Stark just grinned and lifted up his shirt. Justin stared.
“Is that—Is that in—”
“Shhh,” Tony said, lifting his finger to his lips. He took the stripped wires from Justin and hooked them into the glowing blue metal thing in his chest.
“I didn’t know you put it in your chest!” he said a little hysterically.
“Believe me, it wasn’t my idea,” Stark said, digging at a stubborn piece of Justin’s watch. “Aha!”
“Is that it? Did you make the radio?” Justin said eagerly.
“Managed to get that spring out of there. Why does your watch have salt caked in the mechanisms?”
“It’s a waterproof watch,” he said defensively.
“Obviously not,” Stark muttered, trying to clean off the tiny piece of metal. “Okay, there we go. Hold this—”
He carefully transferred the watch/glasses/thing to Justin’s hands, and the angle they were sitting at put his face no more than a hand’s-breadth from the arc reactor, the wires being too short to go far. This close he could hear it humming, and he shuddered and looked away.
“Okay, do you know Morse code?”
“Yes,” Justin said. “My father taught me.” He thought about mentioning afternoons spent banging spoons against pot lids on the opposite side of the house from his father, talking to him even though he couldn’t see him, and waiting with baited breath for the occasional response, usually, ‘Keep it down, I’m working,’ though sometimes it was an actual answer to a question, and those were the highlights of little Justin’s week. But there was no way to say all of that, so he fell silent.
“Great. Touch here, like that—yeah, now send this message: taken by A.I.M., safe for now, location unknown, track this signal, bring bourbon.”
“Bourbon?” Justin muttered, working the tiny mechanism in dashes and dots.
“Oh, sorry, I forgot you’re more of a beer guy.”
“Actually I like sake,” he said absently, and Stark laughed. It was… not mocking. Almost… companionable.
“Then we’ll go out for sushi when all this is over.”
“Y-yeah?” He faltered, looking up at Stark, who was smiling. It was a bit brittle around the edges, but genuine.
“Yeah,” he said, and Justin tried on a smile in return. It felt… good.
“Now, come on, are you done sending that message or not?”
“Right,” he said, and bent back over the watch-radio, still smiling.