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Tony felt them the second they walked into the cemetery--or smelled them, rather. He was keeping out of sight, for now, listening to the crash through the bushes. They seemed to be trying (though failing) for subtlety at first, but finally one gave up and started talking.
“C’mon Stevie, don't tell me you're afraid of ghosts.”
“You hear Americans talk about hauntings enough times and you start to realize that a lot of ‘em sound an awful lot like fairies.” A new voice--the Stevie in question? “I'm Irish, Buck, I don't fuck with fairies.”
And a third voice, the last of their group, unless Tony was very off his game tonight. “I'm just contenting myself with the knowledge that whatever freaky shit goes down here is gonna kill the two of you first.”
“Are you two serious?” The first voice again, exasperated. “What in this place could possibly be scarier than us?”
Well, that was an invitation if ever there was one.
“What indeed,” Tony called out from the top of the mausoleum, and his voice echoed ominously as he swept down to a perfect three-point landing behind the party of trespassers. He rose, cape swirling dramatically around him as they gawked. It was artful, really. Nat would have been proud, he was fairly certain, if she were awake to see it.
“What the fuck,” said the first one, the loud one. Stevie-Steve-whoever, the Irish one, dropped into some sort of defensive fighting stance. The third, who Tony was rapidly beginning to think of as the smart one, looked at his companions and took a very pronounced step back.
“I think you must be confused,” Tony said, raising one eyebrow at the group. “This is a graveyard, not a dog park.”
That got their hackles up, but they still seemed wary. Confused, even. They were new to this, then.
“Don't know what you're talking about,” said the Irish one, feigning ignorance. “We didn't bring a dog, see?”
As if that was a believably human reaction, after Tony had just jumped off the roof of a mausoleum. As if anyone would buy that.
“I see three, actually,” Tony said, pointing at each of them in turn, like he was counting them up. “Big, ugly ones, too.”
(That was a lie. None of them were remotely ugly. They were big, though, especially Stevie, which meant the diminutive was extra hilarious.)
“I don't get it,” said the loud one--what had his friend called him? Buck? Ironic. “We didn't smell anything but dead people.”
“He is pretty fucking obviously a vampire, guys,” said the smart one, and Tony actually smiled at him for that. Mostly to display his fangs, of course, but also a little bit in congratulations for a job well done.
They all just sort of stared at him, shifting uneasily. Tony wondered if they really had never met a Creature that wasn't a werewolf, before. Someone had badly neglected their pups’ education.
Tony resisted the urge to sigh and said, “We don't allow mutts in here. It's bad for a cemetery's reputation if bones start getting dug up, you understand.”
“Really?” Stevie asked, crossing his arms. “Because we’re only here in the first place because we smelled other wolves.”
Tony narrowed his eyes. “They're a special case.” And it'd been nearly a week since Rhodey and Clint had been by--their smell should have cleared up days ago. What kind of nose did this wolf have?
“This is a public cemetery. I don't see that you have any right to dictate whether we can or can't be here.”
“It's our territory,” Tony said, disbelieving. “Don't you know anything?”
The mini-pack exchanged looks, apparently uncertain of themselves, and Tony guessed that was answer enough.
He really did sigh, this time. “Look. You want to come by here during regular business hours, fine. I don't care, I'll probably be asleep anyway. But you can't just come trampling into someone else's space, okay? Forget me--if you smell other wolves, you should take that as a warn-off, not an invitation. No few people would take the ‘rip you apart first, ask questions later’ approach, get it?”
“I'd like to see them try,” Stevie grumbled.
Tony groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Oh, you are definitely going to get yourselves killed.”
“Tony,” Natasha said, appearing at Tony's shoulder out of thin air. She was older than him, and had a lot of tricks up her sleeve. Tony was used to it.
The wolves weren't. There was a lot of swearing.
Nat looked at them, amused. To Tony, she said, “You should invite the puppies in. They've clearly been neglected.”
“This isn't the SPCA, Natalia.”
Nat smiled. “But they are cute, aren't they?”
They were. Tony was rapidly developing a special fondness for the obstinate blond one, but he didn't have to admit that. “You just want to eat them, or else you'd tell me to call Pepper and have her explain.”
“Maybe I just think Pepper deserves a night of uninterrupted sleep for once, Tony.”
Well, that was fair. Humans did need rest, and all that. Still. “If you don't want to eat them, why are you doing your pheromone thing?”
“What pheromone thing?” Nat asked innocently.
Tony looked pointedly at the werewolves, who were all gazing rather dreamily in the vampires’ direction.
“Oh fine,” Natasha said. “Spoil all my fun.”
Well, they couldn't be allowed to leave like that. Resigned, Tony opened the door of the crypt to the fledgling pack. “I guess you three had better come in.”
*
“I'm getting the feeling my lesson on respecting other Creatures’ boundaries didn't quite sink in,” Tony drawled.
It was just Steve this time, making his way through the tombstones. (Tony had quickly been set straight about the name once they started conversing more amicably, much to his disappointment.) He looked up and smiled when he caught sight of Tony, perched on a nearby monument. “Well, you went to such trouble to teach me how not to get myself killed, I figured you would tolerate another visit.”
“Those sorts of assumptions could get you seriously hurt, someday.”
Steve’s smiled widened. “But not today?”
Tony sighed and jumped down, landing across from Steve. “No, not today. But I mean it, you have to be more careful. The rules of our world are very different from what you're used to.”
“I can tell,” Steve said. “That thing Natasha did last night. The pheromone thing? I think Bucky’s still coming down from it. Sam’s keeping an eye on him.”
Tony grimaced. “Yeah, Nat is something else. Don't worry, though, there aren't any… side effects. It's only dangerous if it gets you bitten, and even then, only if you're killed or turned. And werewolves can't be turned.”
“So… are you doing it now?”
Tony snorted. “If I were, you'd know. There's this whole ‘finding the vampire in question completely irresistible’ aspect that tends not to escape a person’s notice.”
“Hm,” Steve said.
“It's not a subtle art, just one that makes you largely incapable of caring. Anyway, that's not one of my charms,” Tony said with a shrug. “There are commonalities among vampires, but not all of us get exactly the same abilities, like werewolves do.”
“Like how it works in Twilight?”
“Bite your tongue.”
Steve laughed. “So, what can you do, then?”
“Plenty of things. Electrical interference. Flying. Some other stuff.”
“Did you just say you can fly? For real?”
“Sure,” Tony said. “It's not that rare, in my kind.” He levitated a few feet off the ground to demonstrate.
“Holy shit,” Steve said. “Could you--could you carry someone along with you, while doing that?”
Tony smirked. (It displayed his fangs, he knew, but his fangs were cool so who cared.) “Hoping for a ride?” He touched back down to land, in front of Steve.
Steve shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket. He was blushing slightly, and it made Tony's mouth water. “I was just curious.”
“All vampires have strength that far exceeds that of your standard human. Not necessarily stronger than a werewolf, but certainly strong enough to lift one.” Tony held out a hand, and waited.
Steve stared at Tony's hand like it might suddenly turn into a snake and attack him, which was definitely not one of his abilities.
“Come on, Steve,” Tony said. “I don't bite.” Then Tony offered a glittering smile that undoubtedly reminded Steve of just how much he knew that statement to be a lie.
Nonetheless, Steve squared his jaw and took the offered hand. Tony pulled Steve in close, hooking an arm around his waist. Tony took off slowly, making their ascent as gentle as possible, but Steve quickly wrapped his arms around Tony in turn anyway.
Up close, the smell really was almost intoxicating. Most vampires wouldn't have been able to get past the musk, but most vampires didn't have wolves who shared their territory and called them pack, either. Tony and Natasha possessed an appreciation for nuance that many of their kind lacked (which was, admittedly, a large part of the reason they had banded together in the first place).
“Doing alright?” Tony asked Steve, as much to pull himself out of his own thoughts as to make sure the werewolf wouldn't panic and go all hairy on him. It had happened before, with a wolf who would remain nameless. (Hint: it wasn't Rhodey.)
“Yeah,” Steve said, staring around in wonder. “Yes, definitely. Can we go higher?”
“Not here. We’re in a populated area; someone would notice.”
“Can we go faster?” Steve asked.
“You're kind an adrenaline junkie, aren't you,” Tony said. “Are you going to ask me to drop you, next?”
Steve started to open his mouth, and Tony said, “No.”
Steve smiled. “Next time.”
“Who says there's going to be a next time?”
Steve grinned, in a way that was distinctly wolfish. “Don't you want there to be?”
This was not a conversation to be had in the midst of a prolonged tender embrace. Tony brought them back down to earth.
“I'd offer to take you out to dinner,” Steve said, “but I'm not sure how that would work.”
“It would generally involve me biting you, so I'd advise against making that offer.”
Steve looked thoughtful. “Well, I could see that maybe being fun.”
It could be spectacularly fun, and probably especially so for someone like Steve. But Tony wasn't going to mention that just yet. Instead, he rolled his eyes. “Moving a little fast, don't you think? I still haven't agreed to anything.”
“But you're going to,” Steve said. The grin was back. “I can smell it.”
“You can't smell shit.”
Steve raised his eyebrows. “You must know wolves can smell attraction.”
“Not in corpses,” Tony said, gesturing to himself.
Which Steve apparently took as invitation to give him a very thorough once-over. “You look pretty lively to me.”
“You're lively. I'm undead. You need to understand that there's a difference.” Tony had let himself get tangled up with too many of the ranks of the living as it was. He wasn't good for them, and they were--well.
They were mortal.
Adding another to the mix, especially in the way that Steve obviously wanted, was incredibly inadvisable. And Steve had a pack, albeit a small one, which meant it wasn't just him potentially getting mixed up in Tony’s non-life, it was Bucky and Sam too. And with them involved, Nat wouldn't be able to stay away, and that wasn't even accounting for the wolves they already had hanging around, and Pepper would want to meet them, and he'd eventually have to introduce them to Bruce, and--
“It's not like I'm a totally normal person either,” Steve said, with just the slightest hint of bitterness. “You want to talk about how lively I am? Come see me during a full moon sometime, it's quite a show.”
It was never easy, being newly turned. Tony remembered that well enough. Some Creatures were born into their world, but no vampires were, and neither, obviously, was Steve. He and his pack could roll in grass for hours and look no greener than they had last night.
Tony felt for them, and that was, as always, his downfall. They weren't the same, not remotely, but in some ways it felt like they could be.
“I know exactly how full moons go, for your kind,” Tony said, looking at the sky and silently begging the universe not to make him regret this too quickly. “That's going to have to wait for our fifth date, at least.”
Steve’s eyes lit up, and all right, Tony didn't regret it just yet.