Chapter Text
Iron Man finds out what the “emergency” was later, much to his chagrin. When he “gets back” he has a feeling he’ll never get to live down how much of a Captain America fan he’d been. The whole thing is embarrassing. Especially because someone gets the brilliant idea to invite Coulson to help babysit kid Tony. They can claim all they want it’s because he watches Supernanny and is scary capable but Tony (aka Iron Man) is certain it’s really because the team wants to see Steve squirm. He’s pretty sure he’s seen Steve look less glum about heading into war zones than when he’s presented to not one, but two overly passionate Captain America fans.
It’s making him really, really reluctant to try coming out to Steve again. On the other hand, he’s worried about his boyfriend. Steve’s been increasingly short-tempered as the days have gone by without any solid progress from Billy and a decided lack of results from other magical and non-magical sources. He’d even snapped at Jan the other day, and she was practically his equivalent in terms of niceness. He’d apologized right after, but still, it was a sign that Steve was cracking.
Then he takes note of how more and more frequently, he was spotting Steve on the monitors looking morosely at his phone, looking at one photo over and over again. It doesn’t take much snooping to find out it’s the only one of him Steve has on there. It’s understandable considering they hadn’t had a date since he’d given Steve that phone; only one very satisfying night before kid Tony had popped up. At the same time, it’s an appalling photo, he looks stupidly dopey and has bed head in it, he didn’t even know Steve had taken it. He wonder at the obsession with that photo as there are way better ones of him.
He hates the answer he gets.
Steve likes sketching people when they’re in front of him. He says the practice is a surefire way of improving with a modest smile whenever anyone asks. Tony knows this because he asked, and by virtue of their relationship he’s been the subject many a time. Steve saves drawing people from his past and the battle scenes that haunt him for when he’s alone. So seeing the pencil shading his likeness when it’s Iron Man who’s around is a red alert.
“That’s..pretty good,” he comments, unable to ask why Steve isn’t drawing Iron Man like he usually would because it was Tony who’d asked Steve about his drawing habits, not Iron Man.
“It isn’t,” Steve sighs. “I mean, the lines are there, so objectively, I guess it’s passable but…I can’t capture him anymore.”
“Hard when he’s not here?” he asks sympathetically.
“Yeah. It’s awful. The thought of him, lost in time, without anyone there to help. I remember when I woke up,” Steve trails off, looking melancholy. “And here I am, useless. I thought, I think I’m starting to forget him. How he looks.”
“There are pictures for that,” he suggests rather than come clean with some stupid line like ‘It’s okay, I’ll just show you.’
“I know. It’s just. Not the same. The photos too, they’re of Tony but they’re not of Tony. I thought I’d always be able to sketch him from memory. That no matter where he was, I could see him in my mind’s eye. Doing this though,” he lays a hand against the paper. “It’s like he’s fading away. Like the image I see is fuzzy at the edges.”
“Oh, Steve.” His chest hurts like the arc reactor is failing and the shrapnel are in motion again.
“Sorry for the overshare. Is it terrible that I can practically hear Tony making some old person joke about my failing eyesight?” Steve barks a laugh and it rips Tony open.
Steve shouldn’t ever look like that, or sound like that, not because of him. It rattles him, realizing how well Steve had been covering until now, keeping it together because that’s what Steve Rogers and Captain America do. He has to do it. Come clean. Even if Steve hates him after and doesn’t ever want to speak to him again for being a lying bastard.
“I’m sorry Steve,” he begins.
“You? You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” Steve shakes his head.
“No, you need to hear me out. I didn’t get it right last time. Wait until I’m done before you speak?”
The blond nods once, slowly.
“Steve, there are two things I need to tell you. Thing one, Tony’s back. Or rather, he never left but he had to pretend he was away for reasons which we can get to later. Just listen, please?”
The confusion and hope he sees both mends his heart and makes him feel like a heel. He’s dreading the next part.
“Thing two, I am Tony Stark.” He detaches his helmet with shaky hands at the moment of the reveal. Even nervous, he’s still enough of a showman to do that if not meet the eyes of his audience. “Well? You can let me have it. I mean, I deserve it, lying to you like I have and–“
He doesn’t get the chance to say more because Steve’s mouth is on his, hot and perfect and the best thing he’s tasted in too long. It’s coming home. Which was odd to say considering he never actually left. Though as the years have gone by, Tony’s realized that how something feels can be as important as quantitative fact.
“Regarding thing two: I love you. I’ve missed you.” Trust Steve to say the important things first. His face is just so much better than it was before. Not that his face is ever bad, but the stark misery has vanished and that’s worth everything Tony has to give. Though the wateriness of those cornflower blues are concerning. “Regarding thing one: you better get to those reasons soon.”
Steve shushes him when he tries to start. “But not right now. I take back what I said earlier. You have many things to be sorry for. And many things to make up for. We’re starting with missed kisses.”
Tony Stark may be Iron Man and a genius, but Steve Rogers is definitely smarter.
-
Steve plans it and as much as Tony hates magic, the advantage of it being poorly understood poses certain advantages for maintaining his separate identities. All he has to do is reappear, look pleased about being back and reunited with technology and shrug when anyone asks what triggered his return. Having it on record that Howard Stark, and Maria to a lesser extent, were absentee parents, allows him to get away with lying that no one noticed that it was an adult, not a child staying in his old rooms. He’s a little surprised the team accepts the story, but after aliens and demi-gods, nothing really sounded too far-fetched.
He almost gets away clean from meeting his kid self.
Steve continues spending time with him, patiently indulging his young fan. Tony finds it horribly embarrassing, but always watches the trainwreck of his reputation from the cams. He listens to edited stories about Howling Commandos, is impressed at how unflinchingly Steve answers with the truth when a plothole’s caught. Eventually, kid Tony starts asking about Captain America’s current team and their adventues. Hearing their stories aloud, it seems absurd that he was there, that that’s his reality too.
Doctor Strange comes back just after Billy declares he’s going to give the spell another shot. Tony thinks its chances of working are significantly higher now that the focus of the spell will be in the right direction. Still, he’s in favor of whatever hoodoo help Strange can provide. The next he sees Billy, the kid has some new jewellery and looks a bit stoned, but Strange is nodding approvingly so he rolls with it.
Kid Tony follows Steve into the spell room, docile until he assesses the chalked symbols in the circle on the floor and the new surety from the spellcasters. He stops outside the circle.
“I want to say goodbye to everyone,” he says, voice quiet but certain.
No one sees any harm in it so Iron Man rounds up his teammates, depositing them at the doorway. It’s there that kid Tony sees him.
“Wait!” he hears from his voice before it broke. “Iron Man?”
Surprised he turns to see small hands motioning him close. Reluctantly, he acquiesces, bending down and wondering what the kid wants.
“I have a theory about who you are,” Tony whispers. “You’re– we’re Tony Stark.”
Had he already drawn his first specs for the suit? He’d started young but he didn’t think he’d be that young.
“It’s okay; you don’t have to confirm it or anything. I don’t know how these spell things work, no one does it seems, so you’re probably being cautious about the timesteam and I have too. Do you know how hard it is to avoid learning about the time period you’re in?”
Is it narcissistic to be proud of his kid self? He turns the suit’s volume down low. “What made you guess that?”
“Stark men are made of iron,” Tony quotes.
“That’s not all we’re made of,” he says, as close to admitting as he’ll get.
“Assuming you’re not trapped in that suit, looks like I turn out pretty alright. And I get to work with Captain America. I can’t wait to grow up!” With a lopsided grin and a wave, Tony heads back into the room.
He wonders how Steve did it all this time, refraining from trying to warn the kid about all the mistakes to come.
Kid Tony stands in the middle of the design and Billy does that thing again that reads on the monitors like a gathering of energy. This time when he gestures, the energy cascades like a wave over his target and then it and kid Tony are gone.
It sort of bugs Tony that he can’t properly confirm whether he was actually sent back to the right time and place. Intelligently, Steve points out that if he wasn’t, at least things turned out right in the end since Tony’s here beside him. The logic is sound.
“You know, at some point, we’re going to have to address that ‘coming out of the closet’ talk you had with me,” Steve informs him when they’re in private.
He’s so screwed.