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Steve is washing the paint off his hands, thinking idly about collapsing into bed and not moving for the next twelve hours, when Remy starts to bark.
This in itself isn’t a surprise, Remy barks at strangers walking past the gate and squirrels running through the yard and sometimes at falling leaves, so Steve doesn’t think much of it. He runs his nails over the dried paint, trying to fleck it off under the water. There are a few stubborn patches that refuse to budge, so by the time his hands are clean his skin is rubbed raw from scratching paint off.
Remy has stopped barking at this point, and Steve is about to lock the door and head to his room when he realizes Remy is still barking, just quietly, the soft, pleased barks she lets out when someone’s rubbing her belly.
Steve opens the door, squinting out into the darkness. He opens his mouth to call Remy’s name when he spots a large shape in the dark, one dog-shape and a very much human shape bending over him as Remy whines and thumps her tail.
Steve’s jaw clicks shut, thinking burglar and then incompetent burglar who gets distracted by dogs, okay, maybe not. Either way, he goes back to his room and gets out the bat he saves for occasions like this before heading out into the yard.
He gets three feet away from them when the guy looks up at Steve.
“Oh, hey,” the man says, slurring it. “This your dog?”
“Yeah,” Steve says, one hand around his bat, but loosely. Somehow he doesn’t think a man as sloshed as this one is will be a threat. “Who- what the hell are you doing?”
The man shrugs. “Petting your dog. He’s nice.”
“It’s a she.”
“Good dog,” the man mumbles, as if to himself. He grins when Remy leans up to lick across the side of his face.
“Remy, quit it,” Steve says.
Remy whines, and then rolls back onto the ground again, squirming in the grass, baring her belly and making happy dog noises when Tony goes back to rubbing it.
“Dogs are fucking awesome,” the man declares, and then his face goes blank. He braces his hands on the ground and leans to throw up on Steve’s feet. “Shit.”
Steve silently agrees as he steps away and tries to wipe the worst of it on the grass. He’s going to ask if he can call someone just as the man slumps over, only narrowly avoiding his own pool of vomit.
“Uh,” Steve says. “Sir?”
Remy gets to her feet and starts sniffing around the man’s face, whining taking a concerned tone. She noses at his cheek, licks it and whines louder when the man doesn’t move.
She looks up at Steve, all doe-eyes and worry, and Steve sighs.
“No, girl.”
She barks, turning in a hurried circle before sitting down near the man’s face and resting her muzzle on his forehead.
“You can’t keep him!” Steve runs his hands over his face. “Don’t get the wrong idea when I do this.”
She does anyway, woofing excitedly when Steve puts the bat down and gets down to pick the man up in his arms, rolling his face away from him so if he vomits in his sleep it won’t go all over the both of them, and also so he won’t choke on it and die in Steve’s arms.
Remy jumps around Steve’s feet as he carries the man inside, and Steve has to nudge her out of the way with his foot before lying the man down on his couch. He lies him on his side, again in case of vomiting, and sets a towel down on the carpet below him along with a bucket.
The man is dressed too well to be petting dogs in stranger’s backyards at 3 in the morning, is the thing. Steve would be surprised to even see the man walking around his neighbourhood- his nails are manicured, his goatee trimmed perfectly, and Steve expects his hair was in place before he passed out on the grass.
He’s also the hottest man Steve has seen in a while. Steve may or may not linger in staring at him, but then he shakes himself out of it. He eases the man’s shoes off and sets them out of the way of any vomit, then gets a blanket and drapes it over the man before going to bed.
Tony wakes up to a dog licking his nose.
“Geddoff,” he says, sleep-slurry, reaching out. He stops when his hand impacts on a furry head.
He opens his eyes to find a dog licking at his fingers, and pets her idly as he tries to work out why the hell he’s lying on a couch in an unfamiliar room with a dog that he’s never seen before.
“Hey,” says a voice, and Tony cranes his head up, wincing at the light.
There’s a man a few feet away, with a waist-to-shoulder ratio Marilyn Munroe would envy, manning a stove. “You like pancakes?”
Tony nods slowly. “Yeah,” he says, and then tries to clear his throat so he doesn’t sound like he’s been gargling gravel. “Yeah.”
“Good,” the man says, turning back to the frypan. “How’s your stomach? Think you can eat some pancakes without throwing them up?”
“Yeah.” Tony scrubs grit out of his eyes and notices what’s in front of him: a towel, a bucket, a glass of water and some asprin. He downs the asprin and water quickly. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” the man says. “I do this for everyone who passes out in my backyard.”
Tony groans. “Shit, did I?”
“Petted Remy for a while and threw up on my feet, but yeah, after that you did.”
“Sorry,” Tony rasps. He clears his throat again. “Uh. Where am I?”
“My house.”
Tony nods, sitting up. The dog- Remy, he supposes- noses at his wrist and Tony resumes petting him. Her, he corrects himself when Remy rolls over for belly rubs.
He looks up when a plate of pancakes is slid in front of him. “Thanks. You didn’t have to.” Tony isn’t used to this sort of treatment, usually when he passes out somewhere in public he wakes up to someone kicking him, or taking a photo that will soon be all over the internet. Or both.
The man sits down on the couch next to him, leaving a good amount of space between them.
“Steve Rogers,” the man says.
“Tony Stark.”
“I know,” Steve says, cutting his pancakes into pieces. “I may have snapchatted a friend of mine your face, since people don’t end up on my couch often, and they called me back yelling about how the hell Tony Stark was passed out in my lounge. I thought you looked familiar.”
“Did you post the picture?”
Steve hums in question around a mouthful of pancake. “What? It’s a snapchat.”
“You can download snapchats to your phone.”
“Yeah, other people’s.”
“Also yours, before you send them.”
“Really?” Steve looks vaguely interested at that. “Huh. I’ll have to learn how to do that.”
“It’s just,” Tony says. “My PA has been on about me about people posting pictures of me doing ill-advised shit lately.”
“Like passing out in someone’s backyard.”
“Like that,” Tony nods. “Again, really sorry. Did you say I threw up on your feet? I’ll buy you new shoes.”
“I was barefoot.”
“Gross.” Tony wrinkles his nose.
Steve shrugs, digging into his pancakes again. “Pretty sure Sam won’t post the picture, either. He’s all about privacy, being a therapist and all.”
“Mm.” Tony makes a note to check the internet for new pictures later anyway, or more accurately, get JARVIS to check. He reaches into his pocket for his phone, has a second of worry that the guy took it before his fingers close around it.
He takes it out, starts tapping through his contacts list. “I’ll be out of your hair in a minute.”
He’s about to call Pepper when Remy leaps onto his lap and curls up so Tony has to hold both his plate and his phone out of the way.
“Oof,” Tony says, because Remy is not a small dog. He puts his plate down on the arm of the couch and then uses his now-free hand to scratch at her side, and Remy whines happily.
“Sorry about her,” Steve says, but Tony can tell he’s fond of the dog. “She imprinted on you a little bit last night. She has this thing where he tries to keep people.”
“Keep people?”
“Yeah. She already won over most of my friends. She has this big mothering instinct, she’s convinced she needs to take care of every stray that comes up in her path.”
Tony huffs a laugh at that. He strokes a hand down her flank, letting her nuzzle into his palm. “And she wants to keep me now?”
“Yep.”
“Aw,” Tony says, forfeiting his phone momentarily to rub down her sides. “I’m flattered, Remy, but I have a company to run. And I don’t think your owner would be very pleased.”
Remy woofs softly, sitting up and nosing at Tony’s neck. She woofs again and Tony feels the puff of breath on his neck.
“I appreciate it, though,” Tony says, fondling her ears. “You’re a sweet dog. I’d definitely let you keep me if I could.”
Remy licks his chin.
Tony keeps scratching her head as he looks around. The lounge is less of a lounge and more an art studio, tarps spread out across most of the carpet, desks and art equipment stacked up against the walls.
“You’re an artist?”
“I am,” Steve says.
Tony raises his eyebrows. “You’re good. I can’t tell good art from a kindergartener’s fingerpainting, but you’re definitely good.”
“Thanks.” Steve smiles. “I hear you’re good at what you do, too. Green energy, right?”
“Green energy,” Tony nods. He reaches to the arm of the couch for his plate of pancakes, takes one and eats half of it, letting Remy steal the rest.
“You’re so spoiled,” Steve says to Remy, who woofs back at him. “Yeah, you are. Look at that smug grin.”
Tony looks down and sees that Remy does indeed look smug.
Remy stays on his lap until Pepper comes to pick him up, at which point Tony is faced with the gruelling process of pushing Remy off. Remy whines piteously every time Tony tries until Steve relents and picks Remy up, putting her on the carpet.
Remy immediately tries to jump up on Tony’s lap again, and whines when Tony stands up too fast for her to do it. She runs circles around his legs as he makes his way to the door.
“Sorry, girl,” Tony says regretfully as Remy looks up at him with the biggest eyes he’s ever seen on a dog.
Pepper, who is now standing inside after Steve invited her in, is pursing her lips against a smile. “I see you’ve made a friend.”
“She wants to keep me,” Tony explains. He gently pushes Remy down when she jumps up at him again.
“Remy, down,” Steve says. Remy looks at him, pausing before pawing at Tony’s knee, whining.
Steve sighs. “Sorry about her.”
“She’s adorable,” Pepper says. “Can I pet her?”
“At your own risk, sure,” Steve says, and Pepper laughs as she leans down to pet her. Remy is loathe to look away from Tony, but tilts her head enough to see Pepper as Pepper strokes her head, cooing at her.
Remy gives Pepper’s wrist a lick before going straight back to pawing at Tony, whining loudly.
“Adorable,” Pepper repeats as she straightens up, her eyes catching on a painting on the far wall. “Oh! You’re a fan of Steve Rogers?”
Tony turns in confusion to look at Steve, who pockets his hands.
“I am Steve Rogers, actually.”
Pepper goes still. “You- oh my god, really?”
“In the flesh.” Steve laughs, not entirely comfortable as Pepper starts to gush.
“Tony,” she says. She grips his arm. “Tony, this is Steve Rogers.”
“We’ve met,” Tony says, watching in amusement as Pepper all but fangirls over him, shaking his hand and blushing and gesturing at the paintings, her excitement ratcheting higher when she spots the unfinished one in the corner.
“Oh, it’s beautiful,” she says, and then turns away abruptly. “Wait, no, I don’t want to see it until the gallery opening, damnit-”
Tony is laughing at this point, petting Remy as she stands on her hind legs, front paws resting on his knees.
“I’m so sorry for acting like this,” Pepper tries. “I just- I’m a huge fan, Mr. Rogers. Your work is stunning, it’s always the first one I head to at a gallery.”
“That’s great to hear,” Steve says, smile going more genuine than it was when Pepper was gushing. “Honestly, I’ve been in a bit of a rut recently, so that’s- really great to hear, thank you.”
“You two should trade numbers,” Tony says. “Steve, Pepper can give you more exposure than you ever dreamed. Pep, you’d never miss another of Steve’s gallery openings.”
When Steve shoots him a puzzled look, Tony thinks it’s just because he’s not used to being this forward.
As it turns out, Steve thought Tony was trying to set him and Pepper up, which admittedly, Tony was.
The puzzled look was because Steve is Kinsey six gay, which Pepper informs him of the first time she comes back from her and Steve’s coffee meet-up.
It had gone well, Pepper told him, and she had gushed some more and hadn’t tried to hit on him because unlike Tony, she actually read his Wikipedia page and knew any girls that hit on him would get politely but firmly turned down.
Tony tries to tamp down on his reaction when Pepper tells him Steve’s gay, and he doesn’t think he does well because Pepper’s smile turns knowing.
“What,” Tony says. “No, stop it, shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Pepper says.
And then she goes and invites him along to her next meet-up with Steve, because Pepper is more cunning than Tony could have ever dreamed.
It’s kind of boring, to be honest.
Tony sits off to the side, swallowing shot after shot of expresso as Steve and Pepper get their art freak on, talking about painters and paintings Tony has never heard of, discussing brush strokes and colour variations until Pepper’s phone beeps and she has to drag Tony away to a meeting.
“We’ll do this again next week,” Pepper says, and Tony raises his gaze from his phone to smile briefly at Steve.
The smile turns not-so-brief when Tony meets Steve’s eyes- god, Steve’s eyes are just as blue as Tony thought they were that morning when he was hungover and maybe still a little drunk, blue like the sky only is in summer, the kind of blue Tony thought was a drunken hallucination, because no-one’s eyes could be that blue without the help of contacts.
Shit, Tony thinks when he realizes he’s been staring into Steve’s eyes for long enough that Pepper’s looking expectantly at both of them.
“Did you used to wear glasses,” Tony blurts, and bites back his wince.
“No,” Steve says after a moment. “Uh. Why?”
“So you aren’t wearing contacts?”
“…No?”
“Oh,” Tony says, nodding. “Okay. Just wondering. Pepper, the meeting?”
Pepper barely holds back a laugh, because Tony hasn’t prompted her to get him to a meeting once in the ten years they’ve known each other, but she shuts her mouth about it until they get into the car.
“How’d it go,” Happy asks, adjusting the rear-view mirror.
“Good,” Pepper says, still smiling. “Tony has a thing for the artist.”
“I do not,” Tony says, and thumps his head back into the headrest. “God, I sound like a high schooler. I do not,” he mimics, voice high as he imitates himself. “I- he’s interesting, is all.”
“Uh-huh,” Pepper says, and grins when Tony scowls across at her.
Steve Googles Tony more than once after he leaves.
The first time is just a general search, scrolling through old photos, but the second is to- well, Steve doesn’t really know, but he goes through the articles he’s already read and the images he’s already seen and tries to see something different in them, because God knows Steve is different from the articles that get published about him.
Remy winds her way around his feet whenever he does this, like she knows.
“You’re a strange dog,” he tells her, and she woofs back at him as he scrolls through the pictures of Tony graduating MIT at 17, neither of his parents present at the time.
The next time Tony tags along to Steve and Pepper’s lunch talks, he sticks behind with Steve when Pepper declares a PA emergency and runs off, insisting Tony stays behind.
“She’s very dedicated,” Steve says when Pepper’s gone long enough for the silence to become awkward.
Tony shrugs, takes a mouthful of coffee. “The money’s good.”
“She’s dedicated to you.”
“Because the money’s good.”
Steve shakes his head, smiling into his hand. “It’s good to see you,” he says, and then his smile dims, like he regrets saying it.
Fair enough, Tony reasons. He did puke on the guy’s feet. “You, too.”
“How’ve you been?”
Tony rolls his tongue in his mouth. “I haven’t thrown up on anyone since we met, so I’m going with good.”
“Do you usually throw up on a lot of people?” Steve asks it innocently, but Tony can see something more serious behind his eyes that Tony has been known to veer away from.
“Not many,” Tony says, trying for casual. He thinks he pulls it off. “Maybe one or two a year, when things get too much.”
“Too much?”
Tony chews the inside of his cheek and then brings out the smile he uses for particularly nosey paparazzi. “Nevermind.”
“You can tell me.”
The thing was, Tony believed him. That’s the scary part- Steve looks so trustworthy, leaning on his elbows, all put together with his button up shirt and his lower-class clothes that he takes such good care of, stitching them together when they fray.
“Nevermind,” Tony repeats, flashing the grin again. Steve didn’t look like he was buying it, but he didn’t push. “How’s your coffee?”
“”S good,” Steve says, and then takes out his straw and licks the whipped cream off it.
Tony watches for a second before Steve’s tongue starts curling around the straw and he has to look down into his own coffee cup, tapping idly at the styrofoam so the coffee vibrates across the surface. When he looks back up Steve is sipping safely at his coffee again.
“How’s Remy doing,” Tony tries, and squashes the light feeling when Steve grins over at him.
“She’s great. Misses you, though.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Steve nods. He takes another sip of coffee, it leaves traces of foam on his lip that Steve promptly licks off as Tony tries desperately not to notice. “I can tell.”
“With your super-secret dog owner skills?”
“She’s acting the same way she acted when Sam left,” Steve says. “Sitting near the door all sad, whining at me. You should’ve seen her when he came back to visit, she spent the whole time on his lap licking him like he’d been gone for a year.”
Tony nods. “Who’s Sam?” He says it casually, with the least amount of jealousy he can put into it.
Steve doesn’t seem to notice. “My friend Sam, we met at a vet’s group.”
“You were a vet?”
Steve’s smile dims. “I’m a veteran, yes.”
“Oh.” Tony swallows. He clutches his coffee at a loss of what else to do. “I. Okay. Where did you serve?”
“Iraq,” Steve says. “Three tours.”
“And- Sam?”
“Afghanistan. Two tours.” Steve stares off to the side.
Tony wants to shake him, nudge his foot- Steve looks like the background sounds melted away, like he’s somewhere other than the city with people bustling around him, but Tony holds back until Steve blinks hard and looks back at Tony.
“Sorry, did you say something?”
“No,” Tony says, but suddenly wishes he had, because they’ve lapsed into awkward silence now and Tony is struggling to find something to break it.
“We should trade phone numbers,” he says finally, when Steve has succumbed to fidgeting.
Steve glances up at him. “What?”
“Phone numbers,” Tony tries again. “Uh. Because coffee.”
He holds his coffee up feebly, feeling like a prize idiot as he does it, but Steve smiles.
“Okay.”
They meet up a few more times over the next month, usually spurred by Tony getting drunk enough to get the courage to ask Steve to hang out or Steve texting him about the new Brooklyn Nine Nine episode, at which point they yell at each other in capslock until one of them comes over to the other person’s place and they watch the episode together and yell some more, this time in person.
Tony isn’t sure he regrets going into Steve’s backyard to pet the dog that came up to the fence and jumped up against it. He remembers, faintly, that Remy had jumped at the fence and woofed until Tony had started petting her over it, and then Tony had thought to himself that he didn’t think anyone had been so genuinely excited to see him in his whole life so he had climbed over so he could pet her better.
Remy had been sweet, licking his face and whining happily when he rubbed her belly, and Tony hadn’t regretted it then but he might now, because he thinks this thing with Steve, whatever it is, is getting too over his head. He doesn’t know if he can come back from this, if he can recover fully if things go to shit.
He tags along to Steve’s next gallery opening, standing in front of paintings and making interested noises until Steve tells him fondly that he can stop pretending to get what Steve’s paintings are.
“I get the gist,” Tony says, feigning offense, and Steve laughs.
Tony watches him laugh and feels himself go past the point of no return, spiralling downwards.
-
Steve is half-awake and walking Remy through the park near his house when Remy goes ballistic, barking wildly and yanking on the lead until it’s practically strangling her.
“Jesus, Rem,” Steve says. “Calm down-”
Remy’s barks get mostly cut off by how hard she’s pulling on her lead, which restricts her breathing, and Steve finds himself following her out of effort to get her not to strangle herself to death.
“Where are we going,” Steve yells at her, and then smiles blandly at the people who stare at him for yelling questions at his dog.
He follows Remy, who wheezes her way forwards until Steve spots Tony and thinks of course.
“Hey,” Steve calls, and Tony looks up and sees him, his expression going from surprised to confused as Remy bounds up to him, Steve in tow.
Remy leaps excitedly around Tony and then Steve, who yelps as the lead tangles their legs together and shoves them chest to chest.
Remy, with no more lead to twine around them, starts barking and jumping at their knees as best she can, wagging her tail.
“Hi,” Tony says, breathless. He laughs; a short, winded thing.
“What are you doing in the park?”
“Out for a walk,” Tony says. “Uh, to your place? I just started walking and I found myself near here and I thought I might as well go while I was-”
Remy jerks the lead and Steve nearly falls, only just steadying himself in time to stop them both crashing into the path, arm going around Tony automatically to keep them upright.
“Remy really did miss me, huh,” Tony says, grinning down at her. He reaches a hand down to pet her and that seems to be the final straw, Remy jumping up and tugging on the leash enough that it takes out both their legs, Steve falling on Tony and Tony falling onto the grass.
There’s a moment where the breath whooshes out of Tony and Steve braces himself on his arms, ready to apologize, but then Tony croaks, “So this must be awkward for you,” and Steve’s apology comes out as, “Not really.”
Tony looks at him, lips parting, and Steve glances down at them before he can stop himself. Tony’s breath catches, and Steve feels Remy’s lead yank away from his hand some more.
“It’s just,” Steve says. “I’m kind of- right where I want to be right now, actually.”
It’s not the right thing to say, Steve knows, and he feels like a right idiot even as he says it, flushing down his collar, the damp grass seeping into the parts of his clothes that are touching the grass, god knows how damp Tony must be right now-
But Tony sucks in a breath and kisses him, and Steve thinks distantly that it might have been the right thing to say after all, even if a dog is jumping around them and the grass they’re lying on is wet and people are probably staring.
Remy jumps on them a few seconds in, making their teeth bump together.
“Get off,” Steve says to her, and then lets his head fall onto Tony’s collarbone in defeat when Remy pads up his back and starts licking Steve’s ear.
“This is your fault,” Steve tells her. “You’re the one who wanted to keep him in the first place.”
Remy starts licking Tony’s forehead, and Tony vibrates with laughter until they manage to untangle themselves enough to stand up.