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“Nooo,” Clint’s stricken yell echoed from both Tony’s comm and the street fifty feet below him. “No, no, no!”
“Hawkeye, status,” Steve snapped.
“The Jamba Juice, Cap,” said Clint. “Oh my god, the Jamba Juice on 4th.” Tony, hovering high above the dying battle, spared a glance down. Sure enough, the brick-fronted building had been reduced to a freshly-smoking hull. Oranges rolled wildly across the street, bouncing off overturned cars and debris like pinballs.
“Yeah, that’s a goner,” he agreed. Clint groaned. The Jamba on 4th was the only one in a ten-block radius of the Tower.
“Can we focus?” Steve asked. His tone didn’t indicate a whole lot of hope. The fight was nearly over, anyway; as Tony watched, Natasha disposed of the last of the villain’s minions with what looked like extreme prejudice, even for her. She had a thing for acai bowls, and was clearly not taking the news about the Jamba Juice well. Their leader was a weedy-looking man with no head for tactics but a gun that emitted blasts of concussive pressure capable of reducing entire buildings to rubble. It was all brute force, no finesse, and Tony felt zero guilt about waiting until he was distracted by Thor, dropping down from the sky, ripping the gun out of his hands, and tossing it over his shoulder.
“Embarrassing,” he informed the man, snapping SHIELD-issued cuffs on his wrists. “Come on, man.”
“Are we done?” Clint asked. “I’m not seeing any walking hostiles.”
“Hang on. I’ve got movement in this alley.” Steve’s voice sounded tense.
“Ugh,” Tony said. “Is it Anderson Cooper again?”
“It better not be,” Steve replied darkly. SHIELD was generally efficient when it came to civilian evacuation, but Anderson Cooper’s overdeveloped sense of journalistic integrity and underdeveloped sense of self-preservation meant that he evaded their agents at least once every few months and inevitably got taken hostage, injured by falling masonry, or remanded into the temporary custody of one of the Avengers until he and his photographers could be herded offsite.
“Oh,” said Steve after a moment. “It’s—it’s not Cooper. Gimme a minute, I’ll meet you all at the SHIELD vans.”
It was closer to ten minutes before Steve reappeared. Tony, who had already handed over the villain du jour, paused to stare as Steve emerged from the settling dust like an action movie hero. His spine was straight, his face smeared with dirt and a little blood from an already-healed scrape. The shield was slung over his broad shoulders. And in his arms was—
“Puppy,” Clint said, pushing rudely past Tony. “Puppy, puppy, puppy.”
“Oh, no,” said Tony.
Steve’s expression was serious, his mouth set. The effect was somewhat undermined by Clint, bouncing around him and cooing at the dog. “We’re keeping her,” he announced.
“Steve,” Tony said weakly. “We live in a skyscraper.”
“I don’t care.”
“And our schedules—”
“We’ll work something out.”
Tony looked from Steve’s face, obstinate under the grime covering it, to the puppy shivering where it curled against his chest. Her dark fur was matted, her front leg curled close to her body, and her eyes were wide and fearful underneath floppy ears, one of which was marred by a deep, already-scarred notch. As Tony watched, she squirmed closer into Steve’s chest, burying her nose in his bicep. Me too, babe, Tony thought. Me too.
“Oh, what the hell,” he said at last. “This is far from the stupidest thing we’ve done.”
It was a long afternoon. Natasha agreed to handle the SHIELD debrief and dragged Clint with her over his protestations. Since Bruce had passed out two minutes after the Hulk disappeared, that left Tony to accompany Steve and the dog to the closest structurally-sound veterinary hospital. Tony, still wearing the armor, leaned carefully against the wall of the waiting room while Steve, who had stripped out of the padded overshirt of his uniform but retained the rest of it, paced restlessly. When the doctor finally emerged, she was holding the puppy, freshly-washed and sporting a bright blue cast on her front leg.
“We’ve microchipped her and given her the standard injections—bordetella, rabies, parvo—but you’ll have to bring her back in a few weeks for another round. It may seem like the bird’s flown the coop on this already, but try to keep her off the ground in public places until she’s gotten all the parvo shots done, at least. Her test results came back clean but an infection right now, while she’s already busy healing, wouldn’t be good.” Steve nodded seriously, shifting the puppy a little in his arms. She yawned widely, showing a row of white teeth and a long pink tongue, and Steve’s face softened. Tony felt his heart do something uncomfortable behind the arc reactor. “That leg was broken, but it’s a clean break and she’s young, so it should heal up just fine as long as she gets some peace and quiet to rest. She’s severely malnourished,” the vet added, mouth twisting a little, “so we can’t be sure about her age. My best guess is about 14 weeks.” She handed Tony a thick folder. “That’s got food recommendations, her immunization record, the microchip paperwork, and a few general bits of advice for new dog owners,” she said, and then handed over a paper bag that rattled when Tony shook it. “Antibiotics,” she said, “one every twelve hours. And painkillers, same schedule. Make sure she takes them with food.”
“Do you know what breed she is?” Steve asked. He showed no signs of feeling overwhelmed, which Tony thought was probably bullshit. His own head was spinning. The puppy suddenly seemed very small and very fragile.
The woman shrugged, shaking her head. “Total mutt,” she said. “She’s definitely got some lab, you can tell by the ears, but otherwise, I can’t say. Whatever she is, she’ll probably end up undersized; this level of prolonged malnourishment has consequences.”
“Scrappy, though,” Steve mused. One finger traced the scarred notch in her ear.
By the time they made it back to the Tower, Tony was exhausted. After they left the vet, Steve had insisted on going to Petco to buy supplies. Afraid that flying with the suit would traumatize the puppy, they had taken the subway instead, Tony acting as a kind of human shield and signing autographs while Steve sat behind him and soothed the dog. Still, photos were all over Twitter by the time they reached the store. Then there had been the shopping itself—a full cart of leashes, beds, food, bowls, toys, treats, a crate, and, bizarrely, baby gates, which the young girl at the register had assured them they would want.
Sitting in the back seat of an Uber, watching Steve watch the puppy sleep with a look of heartbreaking tenderness on his face, Tony blew out a long, silent breath. This is fine, he thought. This is totally fine. Just a puppy. Just Steve and a puppy. Living and working with Steve—perfect, golden, infuriating Steve, with his stupid blue eyes and his laugh and his shoulders and his unexpectedly dry sense of humor—was an exercise in self-control and self-denial. He’d gotten over the decontamination shower incident last month, right? Barely thought about it at all, now. Only a few times a day. Steve and a puppy. No problem.
“She needs a name,” Clint said that night, while they hunched over cartons of Thai food in the living room.
“Deathwish,” Natasha suggested.
“Hmmm.” Steve watched the puppy, who was gnawing adorably at his shoelaces.
“I’m vetoing Lucky, Rover, Champ, and Buddy right now,” Tony warned, glancing up. He had his tablet in one hand and a skewer of chicken satay in the other. “None of those plebian names. I think we should call her Original Flavor Steve.” Steve glowered at him, but there was no real heat behind it.
“Hraustligr,” said Thor.
“I’m sorry?” Steve asked.
“Hraustligr.”
“What?”
“It means ‘dauntless,’” Thor informed them. Clint’s lips moved silently as he tried to pronounce the word. “A strong name for a hound who has already suffered much, yet continues to face the world with a brave and resolute soul.” At Steve’s feet, the puppy gave up on the shoelaces and squirmed onto her back, injured leg sticking up awkwardly as she regarded them all from upside down.
“Sergeant Whiskers,” offered Clint. “Detective Sparky.”
“No Dog Cops,” the group chorused.
“Baby,” Steve said.
“Uh, my name’s Clint, Cap,” Clint said slowly.
“No, I mean, her name is Baby.” Silence fell over the room while they all chewed thoughtfully for a moment.
“Huh,” said Tony, tilting his head. “Guess it is.”
Tony had been building walls, was the thing. Walls of professionalism and self-restraint. Walls plastered with big-ass signs that said things like Don’t fuck it up, Tony. Some of the signs were just pictures, memories that Tony froze and immortalized for himself. Steve laughing at one of Natasha’s deadpan jokes, head tossed back, hair glowing in the afternoon sun. Steve biting his lip, brows furrowed in concentration as he played chess with Bruce. Steve lit up by the blue glow of the television late at night, slowly blinking his way towards sleep. Some of the signs were about Tony himself: the greatest hits of his tabloid headlines, the official accounting of Obie’s weapons sales, the disappointed look on Pepper’s face as she walked away from him again. Just the highlight reel, really. Reminders that no matter how often Tony thought he saw something in Steve’s expression that said otherwise, Steve was not—could not be—his.
And Baby was ruining all of it.
Baby had two states of existence: off her head with energy, and unconscious. Because she wasn’t house-trained yet, Steve had to wake up every two hours during the night to carry her sleepy six-pound body to the elevator, down ninety-two floors, and out onto the street beyond so that she could empty her tiny puppy bladder outside and get rewarded with a treat. Steve didn’t need much sleep, but the lack of a single complete REM cycle wrought havoc even on his near-supernatural energy reserves. After the fourth time Tony walked in on him napping on the couch, Baby sprawled across his chest with her head tucked under his chin, he asked JARVIS to alert him so he could avoid the scene entirely. Then, because he was a masochist, he immediately canceled the alerts and resigned himself to the awful thumping feeling his heart made whenever he stumbled across them.
She teethed, first on the legs of various items of furniture and then on whatever happened to be closest, like water bottles, Clint’s arrows, door frames, and, on one memorable occasion, a gauntlet that Tony had discarded on the low coffee table. She had a special fascination with the pigeons that roosted on the windowsills of the Tower, and left nose-smudges on the glass as she stalked them from their perches. She watched Dog Cops raptly. Thor, who had taken to social media with alarming enthusiasm, made her an Instagram account. Even Natasha occasionally absconded with her in the evenings, possibly to teach her some canine form of self defense or possibly just to watch Netflix in bed.
And then there was Steve. Steve, so cool-headed and implacable in battle, was an absolute mess of a dog owner. Tony caught him anxiously Googling phrases like “puppy hiccup loud painful?” and “rawhide vs. himalayan chew dog digestive system.” While the cast was on, he carried her from room to room with him, settling her carefully into patches of sunlight where she sprawled out and fell asleep, letting out the occasional soft snore and wagging her tail lazily. When the cast finally came off and she’d received the last of her immunizations, he took her for runs in the morning and walks in the afternoons, letting her sniff her way through Central Park.
Of them all, Tony probably sought out Baby’s company the least, which made her obsession with him all the more confusing. When he emerged from the workshop in the early hours of the morning, she often came padding out to greet him, nails clicking on the tile floor as she licked at his hands sleepily. On one such night, Tony allowed himself to sink down to the floor and scritch her gently behind the ear. She nuzzled at his neck and he squirmed at the feeling of her cold nose.
“Hey, Baby,” he said softly. “Yeah, hi. You’re still up too, huh? Need to go out?” She whuffled a little, plopping down onto her haunches and leaning her slight weight into his chest. “Oh, sorry for presuming. I’m almost done with your tracker,” he informed her. She blinked her dark eyes at him. “No, it’s super small,” he promised. “That’s why it’s taking so long. But we want Steve to be able to find you, right? Okay. Thanks. Thank you.” He spluttered as she licked at his face. Behind him, across the kitchen, someone cleared their throat. Tony startled, and Baby huffed when the movement dislodged her.
“You’re making her a tracker?” Steve asked.
“Jesus, how long have you been there?”
“Fell asleep on the couch,” he admitted, moving closer. “She woke me up when she hopped off my chest.”
“Oh. Uh, yeah. Tracker. Subdermal. The microchip works great if someone finds her and brings her to a shelter, but I figured it would be good to have our own method, so we can find her ourselves. So you can find her, I mean.”
Steve was regarding him with a strange expression on his face. In the dark kitchen his face was shadowed, lit up only by the glow of the arc reactor reflecting off the polished appliances. Tony was abruptly reminded of the grease-stained t-shirt he was wearing, his bare feet, the motor oil he could feel in his tangled hair.
“Tony—” Steve started.
“I’m, uh. Gonna head to bed,” Tony interrupted him, pushing himself to his feet and avoiding Steve’s eyes. He felt Steve’s gaze follow him until the kitchen door slid shut between them.
When Tony was ten he built a dog, his first robot. It wasn’t much of one, didn’t do anything exciting. Child prodigy or not, coding a functional AI had been beyond even him at that age. But it could walk, had sensors that could track his movement and match it. It knew how to play fetch, even if its gait was a little awkward on slopes, and it responded to the weight of a small hand on its head by nosing closer. He’d called it Diogenes because Jarvis, who loved Dickens, had been reading passages of Dombey and Son aloud to him before bed, even though Tony had begun to suspect that he was too old for that. It had been hard, building the dog. His hands were small and unused to the work, and twice he had to start over nearly from scratch. It had taken the better part of a week. When it was done, he’d walked down the long hallway to Howard’s study, flushed with earned success, heart hammering in his chest, Diogenes’ mechanical joints clicking smoothly beside him.
Howard hadn’t cared, of course. Or rather, he’d cared that Tony had snuck into his workshop and stolen the parts from his scrap box. He hadn’t given the dog more than a glance. And after that afternoon, neither had Tony.
Years later, though, watching Baby’s dark form careen through the Tower, Tony remembered, and wondered where the robot was now. Probably up in the attic of the mansion or in storage at some obscure company warehouse. Compared to Baby, with her unpredictable movements, lolling tongue, and entreating eyes, Diogenes wouldn’t have even been recognizable as the same species. Too mechanic, too simplistic, trapped in the same patterns of movement and response.
“Captain Rogers has arrived,” JARVIS announced a few days later.
“Let him in, J,” Tony said distractedly. His hands moved over the holographic keyboard before him, inserting the final few lines of code for Clint’s new quiver. When he finished, he spun the chair around and found Steve regarding him, hands in his pockets and hair damp from the downpour outside. His mouth went dry and he abruptly spun the chair back around the other way. “Implant’s done,” Tony said to the screen. “Just wanted you to take a look before I inject her with it.” He sensed Steve moving behind him, felt the heat of his hand just before its weight settled on Tony’s shoulder.
“Tony,” Steve said quietly. “Look at me.”
Tony closed his eyes for a long blink, swallowed, and then did as Steve asked. He must have come straight down to the basement sub-levels as soon as he got home; rainwater was still clinging to his eyelashes.
“Sorry,” Tony said. “I’m. Sorry. I was really handling it, but the dog. Just. So, anyway. It’s fine, it’s not a big deal, I’m just going to—” And then Steve was kissing him, his skin cold against Tony’s but his mouth impossibly warm. Tony brought his hands up to Steve’s sides to steady himself and Steve just pressed closer, sinking his teeth into Tony’s lower lip until Tony gasped into his mouth.
“You’re the worst,” Steve said, moving back just far enough to speak. “I want you. I want this.”
“Oh,” said Tony.
“Yeah, oh. You want it too.” Steve’s tone didn’t change. Tony heard the note of uncertainty beneath it anyway.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “Yeah, I do.”
“Stop pulling away, then,” Steve said, leaning in until their foreheads touched. “Stay.”
Tony huffed out a laugh. “Okay,” he said. “I can do that.”