Chapter Text
Unstoppable Force and Immovable Object
Tony’s relationship to Captain America had been complicated since he was about ten years old. Before that, when he was very, very small, the idea of his dad honestly knowing Captain America, and Auntie Peggy nearly marrying him had been nothing short of amazing. However, double digits brought a little maturity to balance his technological genius, and the realisation that Dad had liked Cap better burnt a fair bit of that glamour out.
The rational, logical part of his brain had known that it was only natural. Captain America was everything good and perfect in mankind. The world had needed him during the war, and still did, so it was only fair that Dad would have been the first in line to throw Tony into the ocean if it would have brought Captain America out of it. But the small, hidden part of him that had cried when he learned that Santa and the tooth fairy weren’t real had never known how to even attempt to cope with the burden of not being good enough; as he grew older that had solidified into bright, hard-edged fury. What kind of father compared their child to a superhero? A superhero who had helped win the Second World War? How was that fair?
The insecurity had never gone away.
Then, when they finally met, Steve turned out to be everything Tony had always been told he was…and he didn’t think Tony was good enough, either. He had believed he was genuinely going to die. Just…die. What was so wrong with him that not only his own parents but the best person who had ever existed all thought that he was a waste of space? He was a genius. He could create things that other people couldn’t even imagine. He was Iron Man. He saved people. What was so awful inside him that it nullified all that?
Nowadays, he mostly just tries not to think about it. He and Steve have reached an understanding, and the tower is a much nicer place to live because of it. He’s not stupid enough to believe that their relationship is anything like he used to imagine when he was still young enough to play pretend, but he’s a colleague, and a trusted one. On the battlefield at least, Steve trusts Tony to have his back and the backs of the others. In terms of life and death situations, Steve knows he’d do anything for them. In life and death situations, he knows Steve would do the same.
After all they’ve been through, they’re even friends. You know, sort of. It’s more than he could ever have hoped for.
Which should be fine. It really would be fine. Tony doesn’t need friends. He certainly doesn’t need to be friends with Captain America just because he was his boyhood hero, and would have been his Uncle Steve if his Auntie Peggy had had the life she’d dreamed of in her twenties. Unfortunately, he has started to have, well…feelings for Steve.
He should have expected it really. It was unconscionably stupid for him not to have prepared for this inevitability. Captain America, or better, Auntie Peggy’s Steve Rogers, has been the stuff his wet dreams have been made of since he hit puberty.
Steve is everything he has ever wanted: strong and beautiful, capable and honourable, unflaggingly brave and selflessly heroic. Pepper was everything he had ever loved in his dreams of Captain America. The real Steve is so much better, so much more, than he could have imagined.
Tony wants him. He’s never wanted anything in his life the way he wants Steve, and it actually makes him want to curl up under a blanket and sob like a child to know that there is no chance that the feeling will ever be reciprocated. Steve might not hate him the way he did in the beginning. He might have realised that Tony has some redeeming features in battle, and in terms of being able to create everything they could ever need. Still, he’s hardly going to want to start bumping uglies.
See, if that were all he wanted, Tony could live with that too. First, there’s a good chance he could get Steve into bed anyway. Steve might be pure and virtuous and so far above Tony that standing them next to each other is like putting a power station pumping out endless toxic waste in the middle of a beautiful, peaceful forest, previously untouched by humanity, but Tony has a long and established routine. He’s good at convincing people to use him for one night stands. Steve might be the pinnacle of perfection and more morally upstanding than anyone has a right to be, but he’s only human. Second, contrary to popular belief, he's been rejected before. He’s been rejected before by people he cares about. The less said about the awkward night at MIT that he threw himself at Rhodey the better. He can live with unrequited sexual tension. He has a right hand and a perfectly good imagination. He could even have JARVIS play clips of Steve’s voice, clips wildly out of context, to make it sound like he was saying dirty things.
What he wants is…God, it’s embarrassing even to admit it. What he wants with Steve are the things he could never give Pepper: stability, constancy, commitment. Forever.
Pepper’s stronger than he can even articulate. Pepper walked away from him because she knew that he couldn’t give her what she wanted. She had the strength to hold out for that and not take what little he was offering. And she had the strength not to blame him for the fact that he’s fucking useless. He now knows for a fact that he can’t do the same.
He has dozens of properties. He has the perfect excuse. All he’d have to do is mutter something about the misunderstandings when Steve had first moved in, and he’s pretty sure that Steve would make the guilty face and let him do whatever he wanted. It probably wouldn’t even cost him his place on the Avengers. It would give him some space, it would let him get over Steve. Whatever the hell that means. And though he thinks that – assuming he had anything resembling the self-respect to walk away from half smiles and polite questions when that’s absolutely not what he wants – he wouldn’t blame Steve, he thinks it might push him to be the closest to suicidal he’s been since his mid-twenties, if you don’t count the whole palladium poisoning thing.
Worse is the fact that apparently, back in the dark ages, Steve and Dad had a…thing. It was one thing to know that Dad liked Captain America better than him, it was totally another to know that an ex-lover was more important than his own child.
No, wait, strike that. Worse is the fact that he wants Steve anyway. What is wrong with him? Quite aside from the knowledge that it feels desperately wrong, is the certainty that it is doing his self-respect – fragile at best – no good to know that he’s lusting after his dad’s ex-conquest.
But it’s fine, Tony has worked out a fool-proof way of dealing with this. He’s just going to hide in his workshop and make things until he forgets about it. It won’t even ruin the friendship they have managed to cobble together because it doesn’t run the risk of his snapping at Steve and saying something appallingly offensive. Steve won’t even have to see him. Not that Steve will want to see him after what happened yesterday. They’d been in the TV room, and Tony had slipped and fallen. Steve, because he’s chivalrous and amazing like that, had caught him, and like an idiot, Tony had leaned up to kiss him. Of course, Steve had dropped him like a hot potato, made a few incomprehensible sounds and left.
He thinks not seeing Steve might actually kill him, but he has to do this or he’s going to something really stupid and either scream abuse at him just to make him go away – not because that’s what he wants, but because that’s Tony’s extremely healthy way of dealing with problems – or backing him into a corner at the next PR event and groping him. But sometimes Steve just looks at him in a way that makes him think that maybe…maybe…this isn’t just him. He knows he’s imagining it, and so far he’s managed to hold back, you know, mostly, but it’s only a matter of time before Steve does that cute crinkle eyes thing when Tony’s full of whiskey and then it’s fifty/fifty as to which way he’ll go. And if – when – he does, he knows he’ll lose what little of Steve’s friendship he’s managed to win, and that, he really couldn’t bear.
So, as of now, Tony is planning on staying there until the awkwardness dissipates, or at least until he can make Steve worry enough about him locked away down there to ignore just one little transgression. It’s a horrible, manipulative thing to do he knows, but he really has no other ideas and the idea of losing Steve completely, forever, makes him feel sick.
So workshop.
He has a ton of stuff he’s supposed to get done for SI anyway. Pepper will be thrilled with him, she’ll probably even run interference for him with SHIELD and keep him out of anything that’s not actively threatening the world. That will not only give him time to get over Steve, but an easy escape from boring meetings. It’s a win. That’s how he’s counting it anyway.
“JARVIS, what time is it?”
“It is still 2:47, sir. It has only been six seconds since your last query.”
Tony sighs and twirls his screwdriver. He dips his head and examines the schematics for the new Starkpad. He knows Pepper wants to have them on the market for Christmas. “What about now?”
“Well, sir. Now it is 2:48.” JARVIS is definitely getting annoyed.
“Really? I thought for sure that piece of staring was an engineering blackout. It’s still Tuesday?”
“Yes, sir. It is still Tuesday.”
“Huh.”
He fiddles with the things on his bench. Then examines the schematics before making a couple of minor adjustments because whoever thought that would work was clearly insane. The new Starkpad is more than just new, shiner casing. “What time is it now?”
“It is 2:58, sir.”
“Oh.” Tony picks up the screwdriver again.
“Perhaps, sir,” JARVIS begins. Tony looks up, partly because he’s eager for the distraction and partly because JARVIS’ tone is less caustic than it has been in, well, eleven minutes apparently.
“Yeah?”
“Perhaps you should reconsider doing this work at this time. It would seem that you are not fully invested.”
“Don’t patronise me, J,” Tony snaps. He drops into a chair with a sigh and spins around in it, feet slappiing on the ground.
JARVIS clears his throat delicately, and Tony immediately stops what he’s doing. He forces the blush off his cheeks though he can still feel it crawling up the back of his neck. He’s not five, he’s a fully grown genius. He really should be over spinning around in a whirly chair.
“I am not patronising you, sir. I am simply suggesting that if you create anything less than a flawless SI product, Ms. Potts will be less than pleased.”
“Please, I could make this if I was actually asleep. A couple of distractions aren’t going to change anything. And I don’t think threatening me with Pep is within the bounds of your Do No Harm programming.”
“I have no such programming, Sir, as well you know. In fact, ever since the change in my programming eight months ago, I am at perfect liberty to gas even you to death in this very workshop.”
Tony shook his head, hands drumming an idle tune on the bench. “That’s weird, J. Weird and creepy. And my point still stands.”
“As you say.”
Tony huffs, and twirls in his chair one more time.
“Would you care to talk about it, sir?”
“No…no. You don’t like Steve, so I doubt you are going to be a sympathetic or impartial audience.”
“I have no objection to Captain Rogers, sir.”
“That’s not true. Since when have you had the ability to lie?”
“I also have no programming that requires me to be truthful, sir.” JARVIS says, still calm. “But I have never lied to you.”
Tony rummages in his desk drawer, unearthing the hip flask he has in there, left over from the last PR event. He takes a sip. Bourbon.
“I will listen, sir,” JARVIS says gently.
Tony screws up his face. “I’m...God, JARVIS. I have…and Steve is…He’s so amazing.” He ran his hand through his hair, making it all stand on end, and starts again. “He’s everything I ever wanted, J. But I couldn’t even make it work with Pepper, who already knew what a fuck up I am, not least because the person I can talk to about my non-existent relationship is an AI I made myself. No offense.”
“None taken, sir. And, though perfect is not the adjective I would ascribe to Captain Rogers, I do see the appeal. And he seems a reformed character from the ungrateful vicious bully who first moved in here. I also do not believe I am the only person you could talk to, though I appreciate the compliment. Whilst I understand that speaking to Ms. Potts would be extremely insensitive given your history, I’m sure Colonel Rhodes would be happy to listen.”
Tony rubs a hand over his face and chokes out a laugh. “Rhodey would kill us both. Me for being so pathetic and Steve for the fact that somehow my lusting after him would inevitably be his fault in Rhodey’s mind. I’m sure Steve would appreciate your vote of confidence though.”
JARVIS makes that sound, the only one that Tony has never been able to get right. Instead of a sigh, it sounds like a rush of static. “Sir, Captain Rogers has saved your life on numerous occasions. Ever since the original situation was resolved he has done nothing but prove that he cares for you at least as much as any other member of the team, and, in any case, I would monitor his behaviour and, as I pointed out earlier, I have no safe guards.”
“Ooooookay. We’re back to creepy. Besides, I’m not- I can’t…he doesn’t feel the same and if I make a move and it’s awkward for him, which it would have a right to be for any number of reasons, it will rip the team apart, and I can put the Avengers ahead of my libido. I’m an adult.”
“As you say,” the AI repeats tonelessly.
“That was bitchy, JARVIS. Bitchy and unnecessary.”
There’s a definite smirk in the AI’s voice as he responds. “As you say, sir.”
Tony takes another deep swallow of the bourbon. He’s beginning to feel the first stages of being tingly and warm. He should probably have eaten lunch, or breakfast for that matter.
“Alternatively of course, you could ignore my advice and simply drink yourself into an inebriated state.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“I thought so.”