Wow, I'm actually posting this. Totally random connected thinking that came to me yesterday. Watched the Iron Man 3 trailer, saw him dragging his suit and got to wondering how he was going to put it back on, and this is what happened. I really have nothing to blame this on but my own weirdness.

I am not an expert in Iron Man's suit, I'm only pretending to know anything, so please don't beat me up.


"The chest plate's connected to the...shoulder joint." Tony's voice sang out.

Steve groaned and knocked the back of his head against the half wall he was leaning against. "Seriously Stark?"

"What?" Tony asked, working diligently with the mechanical pieces in his hands. "I don't like silence, at least not awkward ones and believe it or not, this is helping me concentrate."

"That's the tenth time you've said that line."

"I don't know if you've noticed, Capsicle, but my suit is in a heap on the floor. The power got drained, so it won't attach itself to me like it is suppose to and I can't reboot the system to get a hold of JARVIS until it's all put together, by hand, which is not as easy as you seem to think it is. So either find me something that looks like an Allen wrench or shut up."

There was a pause. "You've already got an Allen wrench."

"And with two I could go twice as fast."

"Yes, so let me help you."

Tony let out a sharp laugh. "And how will you know what comes next? I haven't gotten that far in the song yet."

Steve sent him a glare and began searching through the pile of armor. He held up a piece questioningly.

"Ah, the chest plate cover armor." Tony said, barely looking up from attaching the second shoulder joint. "Some might think that would go on second..."

"And they would be wrong, right?"

"Dead last, actually."

Steve dropped the piece back on the pile and continued to look. He sighed. "So... the shoulder joints connected to the what?"

"Oh, no. You've got to sing it and we're starting over."

"Stark, are we sure you don't have a concussion?" Steve began, exasperated.

"Even if I did, I'd still be smarter than you. The..." Tony sang, holding out the note.

Steve rolled his eyes. "...chest plate's connected to the, shoulder joint. The shoulder joint's connected to the..." He looked at Tony expectantly.

"Gun show." Tony said, simply. "It's behind you right foot."

Steve bent down and picked up the piece. "That's not what it's called Tony."

"Really, and you would know this how?"

"This is an arm plate."

"That's kind of vague, don't you think? Arm plate. It doesn't even cover the entire arm."

"It's not called the gun show."

"You're absolutely correct." Tony said, taking the piece from Steve. "This is 'gun show right'. 'Gun show left' is still in the pile; get looking."

A minute later Steve held out the piece to Tony, who started the song again.

"The...chest plate's connected to the shoulder joint. The shoulder joint's connected to the gun show. The gun show's connected to the..." He paused, raising his eyebrows at Steve.

What came next? Steve looked at his arm. It would be the forearm piece but wasn't the hand piece a part of that? "The gauntlet?" He offered, still not sure why he was going along with it.

Tony looked mockingly exasperated. "The elbow, Cap. I've got to bend my arm. Keep up here. The gauntlet comes after that."

"You're actually going to call it the gauntlet?"

"It's a good name, Cap. Better than arm plate. Don't want the song to get boring."


"I've already told you three times, Tony. I'm not going to sing this part of the song."

"Come on Cap. Off the top of my head, I can come up with fifty things to call it that are worse than "codpiece"."

"Moving on."


"It took you an hour to get your suit put together?"

"Forty four minutes, Bruce. And I'm only going to say this one more time; there was, Absolutely. No. Power. Gizmo duck can't even get his suit on without power. That I was able to do it in such a short amount of time, just proves, once again, what a genius I am, because, let's face it, my suit is way more complex than his. But you can bet I'm going to be fixing this little oversight and upgrade the suit. Probably add a few more hidden tools, a small, limited, back up power source. Well, it doesn't have to be limited, maybe a plug in to the reactor... "

Bruce turned from Tony to Steve. "Was he like this the entire time?" he asked.

Steve gave a slightly strained smile, "It was a team building opportunity."

"Absolutely," Tony said, pouring another drink. "We sang songs, worked on jigsaw puzzles together; team bonding all the way."

"Sang songs?" Bruce asked, feeling like he was missing something.

"Yep." Steve nodded, then sighed, suddenly feeling exhausted. He turned to head to his quarters, then stopped and turned back "And Tony..."

Tony looked up.

"Even without the song, I've got a near perfect memory. So, if I ever threaten to take you apart, now you know that I can actually follow through." Steve said, smiling, as he turned and walked away.

Tony laughed. "Wait, what? So you do have a backbone under those stars and stripes." A beat later he called after him, "Even the codpiece?" A few seconds later, a little louder. "What's that connected to again?"


So this is what it's like to write a one shot. I may just have to try this again. Get all my random out.