Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tony is ten years old when the number shows up on the inside of his left wrist, kind of early. Most kids get theirs later, but he’s always been smart, that’s what his parents say, so why shouldn’t he get his mark early, too? He notices it, three digits in blue, while he’s wiring a circuit board, and he nearly burns himself in surprise.

He can barely wait for the iron to cool down before running to tell his parents. He finds his mother first and points. She smiles at him, but when she sees the number, she goes still and serious. She holds his wrist with one hand, too tightly. “Tony. Did you write this?” She rubs her fingertips against the number like it might be pen.

When it doesn’t come off, she just stares at him for a moment. She looks at him in that strange way he won’t understand until he’s older and it’s too late: soft and oh-so-worried. “Oh, Tony.” She smooths her thumb over his wrist. He can just barely see her number, two faded gray digits under the cuff of her blouse. “Let -- let me tell your father, okay?”

And twenty-nine years later, Tony’s got a car battery hooked up to his chest while he works, and Yinsen, who’s brilliant and hilarious and just as terrified as Tony, nods towards the rag Tony keeps tied around his wrist. “I noticed that,” he says. “The number you have.”

“Yeah,” Tony says. He adjusts his goggles instead of looking up at Yinsen. “Ever met anyone else with one this high?”

“I can’t say that I have.”

“I try to keep it covered up, but you know the funny thing?” He brings the welding torch down to metal and watches the sparks fly. Lifts it up. There’s a perfect red-hot seam joining the two plates together. “People I’ve slept with, they’ve tried to tell the paparazzi. No one ever believes them. Everyone figures I’m a blank, and it’s a joke.”

Less than one percent of humans don’t have a number. Point-two percent, based on the latest studies, one in five hundred. Everyone else, 99.8% of people on the planet Earth, has a number on their wrist giving the age their soulmate will be when they first meet them.

Yinsen might look amused, but it’s dark, and goggles or not, Tony’s eyes burn with afterimages from the welding torch. “Do you know who it is?” Yinsen asks, nodding towards Tony’s wrist.

“Hell no. Haven’t met anyone who’s a hundred and thirty-two yet. Not to my knowledge, at least. I guess you never know, though. Long-lived aliens may walk amongst us.” He readies the torch again, but he looks up at Yinsen again first. “What about you? You know yours?”

Yinsen nods once, curtly. “I do.”

Tony tells himself the hollow feeling in his chest is from the shrapnel, nothing else. He’s gonna get out of here. Eventually, one day, who the hell knows when, he’ll meet his soulmate, and he’s gonna give them hell for making his life so annoying. But before that, he’s gonna get Yinsen out of here too.

He gets out. Yinsen doesn’t.

Don’t waste it. Don’t waste your life, Stark. Tony can’t close his eyes without seeing Yinsen’s face, hearing Yinsen’s voice.

He can tell Pepper and Obi are worried, but no matter how many times he tries to tell them, he can’t make them understand. Maybe Tony doesn’t understand himself. Even with whiskey loosening his tongue, even in his fits of sobriety outside the suit, he can’t make it clear to them: he hopes it’s someone like Yinsen who’s waiting for him. Kind, serious, demanding the best of him.

Someone who’d hate the weapons that the Starks have been profiting off of for too long.

So he tries to change. He tries, and Obi nearly kills him, and Tony should have seen it coming. Should have known. Should have figured it out.

Tony staggers up to the press podium with flashcards that tell him what he’s supposed to say in one hand. He thinks of whoever it is who he’ll meet one day, when they’re over a hundred years old. He’ll be a disappointment to them. He’s always been a disappointment. He thinks of Yinsen, staring down at him, saving his life after he’d been nearly killed by shrapnel manufactured by the company that shares his name.

There’s so many cameras in the room. Too many. There’s Pepper, trying to be reassuring. Tony wonders who Yinsen’s soulmate had been.

He prattles on to the press for a bit about his mistakes, his character defects, all the shit he’ll never be able to escape. He can nearly feel Pepper’s blood pressure spiking. And he’s sorry but he’s not that sorry because Yinsen’s right, he’s been an idiot, he can’t ever get the blood off his hands but at least he can try so that when he finally meets his soulmate -- if his soulmate is someone like Yinsen -- he’ll be able to look them in the eye.

“The truth is,” Tony says, staring down a roomful of cameras, “I am Iron Man.”

Chapter Text

Tony’s world-class at distracting himself, but Pepper’s the first person who ever makes him forget about the number on his wrist. He meets her for the first time when he’s 30 and hungover, and she’s 25 and just spotted an error in the SI paperwork that would have (a) cost millions of dollars and (b) been really fucking embarrassing.

So he’s been smitten from the start, basically. She has trouble making eye contact with him at first, but it only takes showing up to a couple shareholder meetings late and reeking of really expensive whiskey for her to stop being nervous and start threatening to kick his ass and/or quit if he doesn’t shape up. He never shapes up, but somehow nearly a decade passes. Tony gets kidnapped, fights his way out of a cave in a homemade suit of armor, and after that, nothing’s ever the same.

Tony loves her, he really does. She loves him too, he thinks, even though she’s a little more restrained about it. Maybe one of them needs to be.

If Pepper was one of the rare few without a number, Tony would have been tempted to say fuck it and let his soulmate find him on their own time. (And if there’s one thing his soulmate probably has, it’s time.) But in the morning Tony’s still got those his numbers, one-three-two, and Pepper’s got hers, four-three. It’s not meant to be.

Even though it really feels like it should be.

Pepper, though. God, she’s perfect. He’d be dead without her. They make it work for a little while, do the coy boss-and-secretary thing until the palladium nearly kills him and they do the reckless CEO-and-inventor thing, which is way less of a stereotype but just as hot. Sometimes he manages to convince himself it might still be her. He asks her stupid questions when they’re giddy from the excellent sex they’ve just had, stuff like, “Hey, Pep, is there any chance you were adopted? Are you sure? No chance you’re an alien?” until Pepper flicks his ear and tells him to stop.

Sometimes sadly.

The last time he and Pepper break up -- after Ultron, after Sokovia -- Pepper finds him in his workshop with a bottle in his hand. Half-full or half-empty, just depends on how you look at it, Tony thinks deliriously as Pepper screws the cap back on. And she sits in front of him, cross-legged, yoga pants and a sweatshirt and no makeup, and she says, “Tony, I can’t do this anymore.”

Tony’s kinda been expecting it. Pepper’s been keeping him company while he waits for whatever geezer he’s apparently meant for, but he -- he’s been keeping her from someone. All while there’s someone out there perfect for her, waiting for her.

“Sometimes I wonder,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ears, “if it had been me, if you would have quit for me or not. For real.”

Tony wonders if she means the drink or if she means the whole Iron Man thing, and he means to ask, but then he realizes she’s crying, and it really doesn’t matter. It’s not her. He won’t quit. “I’m sorry, Pep,” he says. His voice breaks. “I’m so sorry.”

She scoots up to sit beside him, and he lifts his arm so that she can curl up against his chest one last time. She’s warm, and he can smell her shampoo, sweet and expensive and familiar.

“I wish it was you,” he says into her hair. He doesn’t say everything else he wants to say because it’s all shit she’s heard before from him. If you were a blank, I’d just say fuck it, stay with me anyways, and I don’t care who’s meant for me, you’re here with me now, and I love you -- he still means it, all of it.

But it’s not enough. Because Pepper’s enough for him. Good for him, great for him. But it doesn’t work the other way around. There’s someone out there for Pepper. Who’s enough for her, good for her, great for her. Meant for her, even. And it’s not Tony.

“I wish it was you,” he says again.

And Pepper rests one hand on his knee. “I know you do,” she says. She squeezes his knee, and she doesn’t say anything else.

Chapter Text

After a raid on a Hydra base, Tony wanders into the kitchen at HQ to see Thor delicately extracting a slice of bread from a bread bag. He’s squinting as he negotiates with the tiny plastic thingy that keeps it closed.

Tony’s soulmate is probably not Thor. Could it be Thor? Thor’s probably older than 132. He certainly talks like he’s older than that, but then again, he’s from Asgard. Maybe all the a-hundred-and-thirty-somethings wear drapes and talk like bad imitations of Shakespeare.

And Thor’s far from bad-looking, too, even if he’s not what Tony usually looks for in a guy. Tony usually goes for snarky, like Rhodey, or science-y, like Bruce, rather than earnest, magical, and pretty in a surfer-heist-movie kind away.

It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing in Tony’s life, though, if Thor was his soulmate. It would really, really be up there, maybe ranking in the top ten weirdest things in Tony’s life, but it wouldn’t be number one. Tony throws himself into one of the chairs at the kitchen table and watches Thor’s biceps while Thor delicately sets the bread in the toaster.

“Hey, Point Break. How old are you?”

“I am still young for my people,” Thor says. He frowns at the toaster. “But in Midgardian years, I am nearly 1,500 years old.” The toaster pops. Thor grabs the bread out of mid-air with one hand, then turns to Tony, looking triumphant. “Why do you ask this, Tony Stark? Is it related to your Midgardian tradition of your soul--”

“Nah, just curious,” Tony lies. He kicks back in his chair and props his feet on the tabletop, watching Thor eat undercooked plain toast. He doesn’t even put butter on it. Yeah. Probably wouldn’t have worked out. “What about your brother? Is he younger?”

Thor has finished his toast in three bites. “Indeed,” Thor says solemnly. “Loki is only eleven-hundred years old, approximately, in your Midgardian years.”

And yeah, okay, that one definitely wouldn’t have worked out.

Chapter Text

From the minute Tony first meets Steve Rogers on SHIELD’s helicarrier, he hates him. Or...something. It’s a more complicated feeling than hate. Hate’s a pretty simple feeling, actually, and one Tony’s been familiar with for most of his life. Things that Tony actually hates include board meetings, hangovers, and himself.

Steve Rogers, though -- the way he feels about Steve Rogers is way more interesting than hate. There’s a lot of dislike in the mix, Tony won’t hesitate to admit, a lot of jealousy, envy, other stuff like that. Hurt runs through the core of it, but there’s also some inescapable deep-laid vein of respect that means that even when he wants to ignore Steve, he can’t. And when Steve says Tony’s not the kind to make a sacrifice play, it hurts because he gets why Steve would say that, and maybe Steve’s even right.

Except then Tony flies a nuclear warhead through a wormhole and wakes up with the Avengers around him, Steve and his perfect hair and his perfect eyes included. And after that, Steve manages to look impressed with him every once and awhile, and, hey, maybe this whole Avengers thing will work out after all.

Tony catches himself thinking maybe it could be him every once and awhile.

Except there’s no way in hell. First of all, he’s Steve Rogers. The actual, literal Captain America. He and Tony work together now. They’re even friends, sorta. But that doesn’t mean they’d work as anything else.

And second, Steve was born in 1918. Tony had to memorize that in seventh grade for a history quiz, and for some reason, he’s never forgotten it. So Steve was 94 when Tony first met him, not 132.

But then again, no one knows how the Tesseract works, and Steve was lost with it, right? Maybe time stopped while Steve was on ice. He’d technically be closer to a hundred and thirty if that happened.

Or something.

Tony knows, objectively, that there’s not a chance in hell. But he still thinks about it sometimes. Steve reminds him of Yinsen. Steve pushes Tony to be better, to think about the team before he thinks about himself.

(And he’s easy on the eyes, too, goddamn.)

So, yeah, for awhile, when he and Pepper are on the outs, and after he and Pepper break up for good, Tony lets himself wonder, what if.

Except Steve Rogers has the number eight on his wrist. Just the one digit in red on his wrist like a sideways infinity. The first time Tony sees it is after Steve’s been sparring with Natasha, and he has to bite his tongue to keep from snarking something about Steve being an early bloomer.

Maybe he and Steve don’t get along as well as they could -- maybe half the times Steve looks at him, Tony thinks he looks disappointed, and maybe half the times Tony looks at Steve, the only thing he can think about is Howard and his never-ending search. But they’re on the same side, they’re friends, or at least Tony thinks they are.

And Tony knows that just about everyone who was eight when Steve was a kid is either dead or dying, and Steve’s stuck in the here and now, without them. So he sees it, and he wants to say something, childhood sweethearts, huh, Rogers, but he doesn’t because even Tony Stark knows that some things are off-limits.

(He’d say something comforting if he could. But he and Steve -- they’re not friends like that. He wouldn’t even know where to start. He says nothing.)

A hundred and thirty two years -- it’s weird to think about. Tony keeps himself up-to-date on the life extension work that R&D does, even though it would take more than even the most cutting-edge tech to undo the damage Tony’s done to himself. Not just the drink and the drugs and the days without sleep, but the palladium, the stress on his heart… Tony’s trying to be good at planning for the future now, but it’s for his company’s sake, or more accurately for the world’s sake, and all the ways he and his money and his dad’s company all play into that.

Who out there’s gonna live to 132? How’s this gonna work? Sometimes Tony wonders if he’s gonna end up on ice like Cap did. Maybe he’ll wake up in the future where everyone lives for centuries. It starts to drive him a little crazy if he thinks about it for too long. What the hell is meant to happen to him for him to meet someone who’s a 132 years old, let alone for him to be soulmates with them?

And what are they going to be like? How long are they gonna have together?

Sometimes in the middle of the night, Tony tries to imagine living into his hundreds. Just imagining being older than his mother was when she died makes him feel like the walls are closing in.

(Tony Stark gets called a futurist a lot, but he’s never been good at imagining himself in the future he’s supposed to be inventing.)

And then the Accords happen, and everything goes to hell. And Tony can’t quite figure out why or how to stop it, hell, even how to slow it down.

It’s his fault, sure, he knows that. But every time he tries to make things better, things just get worse. First Crossbones, then the Winter Soldier, and then Steve Rogers is on the run, and nothing makes sense.

It isn’t until Siberia that he gets it. It’s cold, it’s dark, Tony’s suit is screaming warnings, and all he can think of is Steve. Steve, who’s still standing, who says, “You know I wouldn't do this if I had any other choice. But he's my...friend.”

And Tony says, “So was I,” and Steve just shakes his head.

And that’s when Tony realizes, that right then, that he’s been an idiot.

It’s always been Steve and Bucky. Since Steve was eight years old. What number was it on Bucky’s wrist? Seven, eight? Is it still there, or was his number on the arm that got ripped off and replaced with metal?

Tony’s suit starts to shut down around him as he watches them walk away. And the worst thing is that he kinda gets it. He hates Steve for it, hates Bucky, but he gets it.

He thinks about that a lot when he gets back to HQ. While he works on Rhodey’s braces and waits for his ribs to heal. For Steve it was never a choice.

Focusing on Rhodey helps. Keeps him productive, keeps him from dwelling on the video footage he’d seen (Bucky, killing his parents), keeps him from remembering his last words to Steve before Steve had left (with Bucky, who’d killed his parents--)

There’s a couple things he can’t stop thinking about, though. Mostly how the hell could I have stopped this. He doesn’t have to remember Rhodey plummeting through the air; he’s got video from every angle, and he watches it over and over again. In the back of his head he’s letting designs for failsafes take hold because Rhodey’s gonna get better, he’s gonna be able to fly the suit again if he wants to, that has to be how it goes because this is Tony’s fault. It’s Tony’s fault they ended up at some airport in Germany, it’s Tony’s fault Rhodey’s bedridden, it’s Tony’s fault Steve walked away from him into the snow, somewhere else, somewhere where Tony probably could find him if he tried--

But he’s not going to try. Tony’s fucked up enough things for enough people in the past week.

The other thing Tony thinks about, and he thinks about it too much, is just what it would be like. To have a soulmate you’ve known practically your entire life, and then to lose them, and then to learn they’re not really lost, not for good, anyways. And then to move heaven and Earth to get them back.

Of course Steve would do that for Bucky. Obviously.

(But Bucky’s still the man who strangled his mother and walked away. His mother, the woman who traced the numbers on Tony’s wrist while his father drank in silence, his mother who gently told him Tony, we don’t know what this means, but we think it’s very special, 1-3-2, a hundred and thirty-two years, someone out there waiting a hundred and thirty-two years for Tony fucking Stark who can’t stop breaking things, who can’t stop getting people hurt -- anyone who would move heaven and Earth for him would be a fucking moron.)

Chapter Text

Most people have soulmates. Not everyone’s good. Hell, Tony Stark considers himself living proof of that.

Stands to reason that meeting your soulmate isn’t great for everyone. Someone out there’s unlucky enough to be Tony’s soulmate, after all. For a long time, though, Tony wonders if it’s gonna work out even worse for him than for his soulmate, assuming they ever meet.

They should meet. Soulmates are meant to meet; that’s the whole point. But things happen. People die in freak accidents and terrorist attacks and bank robberies, and some of them die before they meet the people they’re supposed to meet.

But Tony wouldn’t get 132 if it wasn’t somehow meant to happen.

But it being meant to happen doesn’t mean there’s meant to be a happy ending. Ninety-nine point eight percent of humans get a number on their wrist, and it’s not like the lucky-slash-unlucky-depending-on-who-you-ask blanks that make up point two percent of people are all deranged serial killers that no one would ever want to be stuck with for life.

The idea of something, someone, coming for Earth has been haunting his dreams for a long time. Since Wanda did her thing in Sokovia. There’ve been a lot of times that Tony’s woken up in a cold sweat, ready to crawl up the walls, wondering maybe it’s them; maybe that’s who I’m meant for. Someone leading the Chitauri back to Earth, searching for vengeance. Some group of aliens searching for new territory.

After Sokovia, after Steve’s left to god knows where with Bucky and the others, sometimes Tony wakes up and figures that’s the kind of soulmate he deserves.

-

When Bruce says Thanos, Tony wonders if this is it.

-

Titan is -- devastated isn’t even the right word. It was devastated once, then abandoned, and now it’s -- there’s nothing.

The dread building up in the pit of Tony’s stomach is nearly too much to acknowledge. Can Strange tell how terrified he is, can the kid? Please, god, he thinks, don’t let Peter know how scared I am.

In the midst of all the terror, though, he finds himself feeling an absurd kind of relief. Titan has been abandoned for centuries, and Thanos was one of its survivors. Fate might be twisting all of existence around its finger right now, but at least Thanos is too old to be Tony’s soulmate. The face he’s seen in his nightmares, the being he’s been trying to prepare for for years now -- Tony looks around, sees Peter looking around, trying to play it cool -- it’s a relief it can’t be Thanos, and at the same time, bitterly, Tony thinks that’s about what he deserves, after everything.

Tony has spent enough of his life enabling the callous destruction of too many lives. Maybe he and Thanos are meant for each other.

When Thanos finally shows his face, though, when Tony’s watching Stephen Strange sitting on the steps of some long-abandoned building and the guy’s managing to stare Thanos down without flinching, at least Tony can look at Thanos and think it’s not you, asshole.

It’s someone else. Someone else who needs him to win this. Someone he’ll meet someday, and then this moment will be nothing but a memory.

There’s someone waiting for him. Someone better than this. There’s got to be.

Chapter Text

“Hey, Nebula.”

Neither of them has eaten or slept in what feels like days, and there hasn’t been a lot to talk about. Nebula looks up, hollow-eyed, from the circuits surrounding her. “What?”

“How old are you?”

“I am twenty-six years old by Titan’s years,” she says. She tilts her head, thinking. “That is slightly more than 32 years on Earth.”

Thirty-two. Fuck, Tony feels old. In his exhaustion, he’d kinda hoped it was her. Wouldn’t have made much sense, but hell if it wouldn’t have made for a romantic saving-the-world story.

“And how old were the…” Tony points his wrench towards the empty stretch of sky and land. “...the rest of your friends? Just curious.”

Nebula stares at him like he’s insane for a couple seconds. Which, to be fair, it’s an insane question. He’s pretty sure Quill’s people weren’t Nebula’s friends to start with, and they’re all dust now, anyways. But still. After a moment, Nebula shrugs. “I don’t know.”

Fair. Tony looks back down at the wiring he’s been trying to make sense of for days. Everything hurts. His eyes ache when he blinks, and his throat feels raw.

He doesn’t expect Nebula to keep talking, but she does. “Why do you ask?”

“Humans have a soulmate thing,” Tony says, for some reason. He’s not sure why he wants to tell Nebula of all people this, or why it’s something he suddenly feels like he should talk about. Maybe it’s just a distraction, any sort of distraction -- he’d been good at distracting himself once, but this is different. Everything about this is different. “Number on our wrists. Tells us how old our soulmate’s gonna be when we meet ‘em.”

“Quill had one,” Nebula says. “My sister told me. What is yours?”

What the hell’s Nebula gonna do, tell the paparazzi down on Earth? Even if they ever get back, no one will care. “Mine says a hundred and thirty-two. Which is older than humans usually get to be, if you didn’t know. Figured they might not be human, whoever they are.”

Nebula tilts her head. “Do you think they’re still alive?”

He hasn’t even thought about that. How the hell hasn’t he thought about that? His whole life, stuck in a cave in Afghanistan or bound to a mattress frame or freezing half to death in Siberia, that number, that absurd, annoying number on his wrist, it’s been a weird consolation. ‘Cause it meant there’s someone out there waiting for me, it meant maybe it’s gonna take a long time, but there’s something, there’s someone. And some stupid part of Tony’s brain has just been blithely assuming Mister or Miss or Mx Right was definitely still out there. Still alive. Waiting. Maybe with some mystery number if they were human. Maybe not if they weren’t. But now…

Tony bites his lip, hard. “No idea,” he says. “Hey, fifty…” His voice trails off. He breathes in deep and slow, trying to control himself. “Fifty-fifty chance, right?” His voice breaks on the last word.

He sees Nebula look away as he puts his face in his hands, and for just a few minutes, on a ruined and empty planet, he lets himself cry.

Chapter Text

The first time Tony sees Stephen Strange, it’s while the guy’s hovering in the middle of Central Park, surrounded by some glowing portal, and his first thought is you’ve got to be kidding me. Things only get worse from there. The guy has an actual magic cape.

It’s easy to switch from arguing with the guy to fighting alongside him. And it turns out the magic cape is just the start; the guy’s got some serious firepower. Though he still gets literally abducted by an alien like an hour after Tony meets him, and that just won’t do; then Tony’s on the spaceship, and Peter’s there too because he’s too damn stubborn to realize when he’s in over his head, and then everything gets worse from there.

Tony thinks about Strange a lot while they reconstruct the gauntlet. Strange’s last words, at least. It was the only way. Stranded in space, waiting for rescue; trying to fall asleep and knowing he’ll wake up from nightmares of Peter slipping away in front of him all over again; when Steve comes up with his insane plan that might just actually work. It was the only way.

It’s a thin sliver of hope, but it keeps him going.

After Thanos is dead -- after the gauntlet shatters Tony’s left arm, and after the universe resets itself to the moment just before Thanos’s snap -- Tony puts up the suit, maybe for good. Bruce helps him around the laboratory while Tony waits for his bones to knit back together.

He spends a lot of time with Peter, lets the kid show him as many awful movies as he wants. Kids these days, no taste.

And he tries to get used to this, the new normal. A world that knows everything ended, except everything got fixed, and now everyone struggling to adapt to it. His arm heals. Bruce finally takes a job in the R&D department, which is great for SI, but Tony sees less of him.

Tony had loved restoring cars once. He goes back to that, spending hours in the basement with music playing real loud, trying to think about nothing but what needs to be done next. Tearing down the wiring, spit-shining the fixtures, replacing upholstery.

He doesn’t see much of Strange, but why would he? He’s retired. Strange is still doing his wizard thing, as far as Tony knows. Strange doesn’t make the news like Steve still does. Which makes sense, since based on Tony’s idle web searches, it’s not like Strange is a public figure. There’s a couple blurry cell phone videos of him appearing in the middle of Central Park, but the public hasn’t attached a name to the face. Everything Tony can find about Strange is about the guy’s surgical career, rather than his wizarding career.

And the crash. There’s a few articles about the crash.

Which is what makes it weird to hear Peter mention him. They’re halfway through a truly terrible monster movie. “This is bad, Peter. This is really bad. We could watch something else, you know. They make movies that are better than this.”

“It’s so bad,” Peter agrees. “Dr. Strange recommended it, actually, so I can’t take all the credit.”

“Strange? Where’s he at these days, still doing magic tricks?”

“177A Bleecker Street.” Which is a more literal answer than Tony had expected. Peter scoops up the last of the popcorn and shoves it all in his face like the teenaged menace he is. He doesn’t look away from the screen for an instant. “You should visit him sometime. He’s cool.”

“Really, the guy with the cape is cool?”

“Weird,” Peter admits through a mouthful of popcorn, “but cool.” He swallows. “He makes me do concussion checks whenever he sees me out on patrol, though, and I’m pretty sure it’s actually impossible for me to get concussions.”

Concussion checks. Tony glances at Peter out of the corner of his eye, searching for any bruising. “...how often are you hitting your head that you’re confident about that?”

“Uh, not that often,” Peter says. His voice goes high-pitched the way it always does when he’s lying.

Tony decides to add way more tracking sensors to the next suit. Anything concussion-level should flag Peter to follow up with a physician, no matter what the kid thinks about his superpowers.

The next day, Tony web searches the address Peter had mentioned: 177A Bleecker Street. There’s no public records associated with the address, let alone a phone number, but it exists on maps, so -- Tony gets Happy to drive him. Why not?

177A Bleecker is surprisingly normal looking, except for the gigantic window. Tony raises his hand to knock on the door, but just before his knuckles would meet the wood, something happens -- his ears pop, and he’s somewhere else.

A kitchen. A very normal looking kitchen, except for the fact that Tony was just teleported into it, and Strange is attending to a teakettle on the stovetop. “Stark,” Strange says, not looking up. “Tea?”

“Did you just teleport me here?”

“I don’t see anyone else who could have done it,” Strange deadpans. He isn’t wearing the getup, just normal clothes. “Tea?”

Without the robes and magic cape, Strange looks less ridiculous. Kind of handsome, actually, in a stuffy way. He’s wearing a grey t-shirt and a black cardigan and, holy shit, jeans. “Not really what I came here for. You’re a hard man to get in touch with, did you know that?” Tony says.

Strange immediately turns to Tony and straightens. His eyes are pale and intense. “What’s wrong?” He has the same demeanor as the first time they’d met, serious and on high alert. It’s easy to imagine Strange in an operating room like this.

“Nothing urgent,” Tony says. He leans in the doorway, trying to imagine Strange and Peter together. It’s a moot point now, but there was a point in time when Strange had been willing to sacrifice Peter for the Time Stone. And the kid can get over-enthusiastic, which doesn’t seem like something Strange would tolerate well. “Peter mentioned you the other day. Something about concussion tests.” Tony still can’t believe Peter thinks Strange is cool. “Yes to the tea.”

Strange makes some gesture, and a cabinet opens. A mug floats out of the cabinet settles on the counter, and a teabag emerges spontaneously from a box, draping itself perfectly into the mug.

Okay, Peter would think that was cool. Tony doesn’t. Nope.

Strange turns his laser focus back to the tea. He pours water over the leaves slowly, precisely. “I think the Sanctum’s on one of Peter’s patrol routes. He took a pretty bad fall nearby last month and stopped in to recover for a bit.” Strange describes it: a stormy night, a mugger, and Wong in the right place at the right time. “A normal person definitely would have been concussed. I’m not convinced Peter wasn’t but if he was, he recovered quickly.”

Tony fights his irritation that Peter hadn’t told him. But then again, Peter’s an adult now, and Tony also has not handled previous times when Peter’s been injured with particular grace or restraint. He rubs at the edge of his beard. “Thanks for looking out for him.”

Strange takes the teabags out. “He knows he can come here at any time. The Sanctum is always open to anyone who needs it.”

Strange offers the first cup to Tony. It’s better than Tony expected, light and sweet instead of the bitter green stuff that Bruce swears by.

“Really, I appreciate it. You should be able to get in touch with me, though, in case anything ever -- in case anything happens to Peter.” In case anything happens to Peter again. Tony still has nightmares of the kid turning to dust in his arms, wakes up half-convinced he’s still gone.

And if something happens to him while he’s patrolling…

Strange says, “Well, I do have a cell phone.”

“Also I heard you recommended a truly terrible movie to Peter.”

Then Strange grins, and Tony realizes, yes, Strange is attractive, and...not in a stuffy way. “He asked me what the worst movie I’d seen was.”

“Great job. I hated it.”

Strange’s cell phone is four years old and vulnerable to at least four exploits that Tony’s heard of, probably more. Tony gets Strange a StarkPhone the next day. Strange tries to refuse it, but Tony insists. “Consider it a bribe for you to keep looking out for the kid,” Tony says. “Besides, anything where we might mention his name should have state-of-the-art encryption; it’s too easy for someone to find his identity as it is.”

That, at least, seems to sway Stephen. He turns the phone over in his hands, studying it. He looks puzzled as he powers it on. “Well, Wong will be jealous.” He smirks. “That’s reason enough to accept. Thank you.”

Strange has a good smirk. It might actually be more infuriating than Tony’s.

Strange slips the phone into his pocket. “I was about to make tea.”

“Is that you kicking me out or you offering?”

“If I wanted to kick you out, you’d be gone already,” Strange says. “Magic, remember?” And winks.

His smirk is definitely more infuriating.

(They spend more than an hour talking about nervous system regeneration research.)

A week later, Strange suggests that he visit Tony’s building. If something happens to Peter, Strange can only throw portals to places he’s been before. That little piece of information is absolutely bizarre to Tony -- how can magic work only for places you’ve seen? He sends a car anyways.

Strange shows up looking a little pale, even for him. It takes Tony about two seconds to remember car crash. Strange must see it in Tony’s face because he just shakes his head. “Don’t.”

“You have no idea what I was about to say,” Tony says, maybe a little too defensively. “Wait. Do you? Don’t tell me you can read minds.”

Strange glares. “If I wasn’t alright taking a car, I’d have told you.”

Right. Tony still feels a weird tug of guilt. He’s not sure if it’s for not anticipating Strange disliking car rides or if it’s for being too obvious putting the pieces together in front of him. Strange is the proud type. Tony clears his throat and gestures towards his workshop. “Well, let me give you the tour.”

“You don’t have to. I only need to see this much.”

Tony shrugs. “Can’t hurt.” He shuts down the project files he’d been working on. “I mean, I won’t make you. I’m not kidnapping you here.”

Hopefully Strange is just being prickly because of the car thing. Strange has seemed pleased enough to see Tony the handful of times Tony has showed up at the Sanctum, and he’s sharp enough that their conversations are actually interesting.

Or maybe Tony’s just been desperate for human company, and Strange puts up with it because the Sanctum never turns anyone away. It’s a bitter thought. They’re not friends, but Tony realizes belatedly he’d hoped they might become friends.

The screens shut down, and Tony can’t think of anything else to stall with. “You want something to drink? Bruce left, like, half his tea collection here. I don’t know what most of it is.”

When Tony looks up again, Strange is looking around. He doesn’t look nervous anymore, instead a little...wistful, maybe.

“Well, if only to help you label your...friend’s tea collection, I suppose I can spare an hour or two. Barring any unforeseen emergencies.”

The way Strange had said friend sits uneasily in Tony’s head. Something about it bothers him. “Bruce helped me in the lab while, you know…” Tony taps at his forearm. While the best surgeons in the world reassembled his radius and ulna from fragments. “Finally managed to talk him into taking an R&D position, which I’ve been trying to do pretty much since I met him.”

“Ah, Dr. Banner.”

“The one and only.”

“Is he…” Strange mimics Tony’s gesture, tapping at his wrist instead. Your soulmate, he means.

It’s hard to imagine that now, after knowing Bruce for so long. But it would be -- him and Bruce could be good. Bruce is smart, so smart, and they can actually talk about science together. No wonder he’s taken to Strange’s company.

Not that Strange is a Bruce replacement. Strange is more prickly, more sarcastic, harder to impress. After all, what good is Tony’s money and tech to him? The guy does magic; the stuff about Tony that impresses other people is kind of useless to someone like Strange.

“Nah.” Tony heads for the elevator, trusting Strange will follow him. “Brucey’s got the number fifty-six, and I might be worse for wear, Doc, but I’m not that old yet.”

“Ah.” That information apparently does nothing to improve Strange’s weird mood. “That’s a...higher number than average.”

“Yeah,” Tony says. It’s less than half of Tony’s number. “It is.”

(It’s weird until, over tea, Strange reluctantly admits he’d had to web search a guide to using the StarkPhone, and Tony laughs harder than he should. Strange doesn’t seem to take it personally.)

Tony invites Strange over a week later, mostly because if Peter expects him to suffer through another terrible movie, he deserves adult company. Strange declines on the basis of something magical happening, but at least over the phone, he sounds genuinely regretful.

A week or two passes. Tony kinda figures that’s it, Strange will get in touch with him if something bad happens to Peter, but he doesn’t expect anything more than that.

A few days later, Strange texts him a link to a study on computational simulations of the nervous systems and asks what he thinks. Tony texts back maybe four hundred words. Strange messages back offering to open a portal so they can talk about it face to face.

It’s...nice.

Strange is busier than Tony is. Tony is retired now, officially, but more from the Iron Man thing than from SI. Still, Pepper handles the day-to-day stuff. Tony’s job is to show up every couple months with something interesting. He’s good at that part of SI, at least.

Strange makes time for him anyways. Text message updates about Peter, idle questions about technology, stuff like that.

As far as Tony can tell, if Strange has a soulmate, they’re not around. Maybe they’re dead. Maybe Strange is a blank. Maybe Strange hasn’t met them yet.

Tony tries not to think about it too much. It’s not his business. They’re friends, maybe, but not like that.

And it’s not Strange. It can’t be.

Strange is...he’s not nice, but Tony isn’t, either. Strange is kinder-hearted than he lets on, though. He has a habit of cutting through awkward tension with withering sarcasm, and he’s just as sharp as Bruce is. He speaks six languages that Tony knows of, and based on his library habits, he reads more than that.

They’re friends. Or something. Seeing each other every few weeks shifts into seeing each other once a week at minimum. Every now and then, Strange gets take-out from across the planet for Tony and Peter’s bad movie nights. It’s good.

It’s enough, Tony keeps telling himself. It’s enough.

It’s the Time Stone thing. That’s what Tony tells himself; that’s why he can’t just categorically discard Strange as a no way in hell about the whole soulmate thing.

Except Strange’s thing had been protecting the Time Stone, not using it. Right? Maybe, maybe, maybe. It gets under Tony’s skin, makes him wonder.

On days when Strange doesn’t have anything else going on, sometimes Tony hangs out at the Sanctum instead. It’s easy to do. He just texts Strange, and boom, portal.

It’s one of those days that he finally screws up the courage to ask, “Hey, Doc. How old are you?”

“Forty-three,” Strange says.

Which is...kind of a shame. What had he really expected, though? Strange is a human as far as Tony can tell, and he should know better by now than to get his hopes up.

But he’s oddly surprised by how disappointed he is.

They’re in the library. Strange has been working his way through a pile of books written in a language Tony doesn’t recognize while Tony’s been mostly poking around the library shelves and finding nothing of interest.

Tony flops into one of the library’s tall-backed chairs. Dust puffs up around him. “Really? You seem older. Like, in a distinguished way. I think it’s the hair,” he says, trying to sound as flippant as possible. Strange isn’t looking at him, but Tony taps at one temple anyways. “I like it. It suits you.”

“I used to dye it,” Stephen says, not looking up from the stack of books he’s poring over. “It didn’t seem so important after the crash.”

Strange doesn’t talk about before much. His old life, brilliant neurosurgeon, renowned the world over. Whenever he does, though, it’s with this wry kinda amusement where it’s clear he doesn’t think too highly of the person he used to be, but he’s also been humbled enough not to pretend it didn’t happen. And, well, Tony can relate to that, at least.

“So wizarding is kinda your early mid-life crisis, huh,” Tony says, because he’s an idiot and enjoys riling people up almost compulsively.

Strange looks up from his books, but it’s just to roll his eyes. “I’m long beyond that, believe me,” he says. “And tell me, what are you doing in your retirement again? And how many sports cars does it involve?”

“Hey, they’re not all sports cars!” Tony protests. “And I’m restoring them, not drag racing.”

“Right. That’s much more dignified,” Strange says, just pure sarcasm, acid dripping from every obnoxiously baritone syllable.

Tony can’t help grinning. The great thing about Strange is that not only does he rise to the bait every single time, he kinda seems to enjoy doing it, and he also gives as good as he gets. Strange glances up from his books for just an instant and kind of half-smiles at the way Tony’s still grinning like a dope.

“Fair point.” Tony tips his head back to stare at the ceiling. “You should come by and see ‘em sometime. Just got my hands on a ‘69 Dodge convertible. Looking pretty pathetic now, but give me a week and…” He snaps. “She’ll look good as new.”

“I’ll consider it.” Strange doesn’t sound like he means it.

Quiet settles. Tony pulls his phone out to work on an email to R&D about a piece of hardware they’re stuck on, which sends him down a research rabbithole. It’s nice, just having company.

Tony’s in the middle of reading a white paper on bioplastics when Strange speaks again.

“I’m forty-three technically. Legally.”

It takes Tony a moment to switch gears, mentally. Right, Strange’s age. Forty-three legally -- like that’s supposed to clarify anything.

Meaning...

Tony leans back in the armchair he’s appropriated. He relaxes as much as he can, lolling his head from shoulder to shoulder to shake out an imaginary stiffness, pretending he’s not suddenly weirdly nervous. “What does that mean, pray do tell? Are you secretly younger than you pass yourself off as being? Did you sneak into med school early? Some kinda Doogie Howser set-up?”

“Not younger.” Strange sighs as he closes the book he’s been skimming and sets it aside. He picks up the next from the pile.

“You can’t leave me hanging like this, Doc. Legally forty-three?”

“There was...a threat,” Strange says. He rubs at his chest, not looking up from the book he’s studying. “I used the Time Stone to address it.”

Weird imagining Strange wielding an Infinity Stone. They’re gone now, destroyed, but even that had cost so much -- it’s weird remembering that the man in front of him is powerful enough to have used the Time Stone like that.

But from the set of Stephen’s shoulders, Tony can tell there’s something else there, something heavy, and the polite thing to do would be to change the subject. Either fortunately or unfortunately, Tony isn’t really known for being polite. “So it took you longer than a year to...address this threat.”

“Yes, longer than a year.” Stephen’s voice is clipped. He rolls his shoulders without looking up, and when he speaks again, he sounds resigned. “Much, much longer than a year.”

Oh. Oh.

Tony gives Strange the once-over again. Or as much of a once-over as he can manage while Strange is half-hidden behind a gigantic pile of magical books. Okay. Is this it? If this is it, he can work with this. Snarky, check, science-y, check, admittedly magical -- hey, no one’s perfect.

Who’s he kidding? Tony wants this to be it.

“Would you say that you’re over or under a hundred years old?”

Which is clearly not the response Strange expected. His eyebrows are furrowed together, and he stares at Tony for a few seconds before answering. “Over,” he admits.

Strange did give up the Time Stone for Tony’s sake once. Which is honestly one of the more romantic things Tony can imagine. The Time Stone had been Strange’s whole, like, thing. His sworn mission had been protecting it. “Over or under two hundred?” Tony asks, as breezily as he can.

“...under.” He sounds more hesitant this time. He’s staring at Tony with an unreadable expression.

Strange has got to know why he’s asking. There’s really only one reason people ask probing, specific questions about age like this. And Strange hasn’t shot him down yet, so...

“Huh.” Tony stands and shrugs off his hoodie and tosses it over the back of the dusty armchair. It’s gonna be weird. Always was gonna be weird, no matter what. This isn’t anywhere near the weirdest it could have been. This is less weird than if it had been Thor, for one. “I’m going out on a limb here, but just in case, you should know that I was forty-eight when we met.”

Strange closes his book. He doesn’t look away from Tony once as Tony approaches.

Tony slips off the sweatband he usually wears over his left wrist and tosses it over his shoulder. Maybe it lands on the chair with his hoodie. He can’t even pretend to care. He pushes up his long-sleeved tee and does something unnatural: he turns his wrist towards Stephen. Actually shows someone the numbers, on purpose. Three numbers in bright electric-butterfly blue: one-three-two.

“Tony,” Strange says. Reminds Tony of the first time Strange -- Stephen -- had said his name kind of like that, on Titan, after looking into the future -- which reminds him.

“Wait. How is this a surprise to you?”

Strange -- Stephen -- he looks a little taken aback. Amused, too, though, thank god. “I don’t follow,” he says.

“You looked into the future. A lot. Millions of times. Surely this came up in at least one of them.”

“The futures I saw were more vague than that, Stark,” he says.

Tony cuts him off. “Uh-uh-uh, let’s not go back to last names, okay? Me, Tony, you, Stephen.”

This time when Stephen says “Tony” it’s a little exasperated. Good. “The spell I used didn’t work with that much precision.” He lets Tony reach for his left wrist, then shakes his head and turns in his chair, offering his right instead. His voice is deep and quiet enough that Tony needs to lean in a little to hear him. “I only searched for where we won. Nothing that came after.”

Tony feels for where the cloth binding Stephen’s wrist is tucked under itself, and he pulls it away without much finesse. Stephen’s hand is shaking. Tony can’t tell if it’s shaking more than usual or if he’s just close enough for once to see how bad it can get.

Knotted white scars cover the back of Stephen’s hands, mostly running parallel to the thin bones of his fingers. There’s some that run from his fingers down the backs of his hands towards his wrist.

Tony turns Stephen’s hand over in his own. On Stephen’s wrist, two numbers, arc-reactor blue: four-eight. Tony traces them with one fingertip, barely able to believe it. The four almost too precise, the eight like a sideways infinity, bisected by a long silver scar that runs halfway up Stephen’s forearm. When he glances up at Stephen, Stephen is staring at him wide-eyed like he still can’t believe it either.

It’s not a guarantee things are going to work out. Tony’s made his peace with that. But it’s a chance, finally it’s a chance, and Tony will take it, he’ll take it, he’ll do a good job of this, yes, god, please. He leans in to kiss Stephen’s wrist, the place where the eight is. He swears he can feel Stephen’s pulse thrumming.

And then he looks up, and Stephen’s still staring down at him all wide-eyed and grateful like he’s somehow the lucky one. Ridiculous. Stephen isn’t the one who’s been carrying around a three-digit number his whole life, wondering what it means. Tony sits up and lets himself grin dopily, even though normally every instinct of his would be screaming for him to play it cool.

“So now you’ve totally got to come see my ‘69 Dodge,” he says.

Stephen rolls his eyes, but he stands, and Tony stands, too; Stephen hauls him into a kiss, hot and urgent and oh, this is what it’s like, this is what it’s supposed to be like, this is it, Tony knows it deep down in the core of him.

When they pull away from each other to catch their breath, the Stephen who’s in front of him -- he’s never seen Stephen this open, this wide-eyed. “Tony,” Stephen breathes. He holds Tony’s face in his hands, knocks their foreheads together.

Tony has to close his eyes. Stephen this bright-eyed, this serious -- it’s hard to deal with. None of the reserve he’s come to associate with Stephen. None of the stoicism. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s me.”

“Tony,” Stephen says, so quietly, but Tony can feel Stephen’s breath against his face, and it’s good, it’s so good. “You don’t -- you can’t know. I’ve loved you for…” Stephen’s hands drag down Tony’s face to cup his neck, and Tony shivers against Stephen.

They’re here, standing together, leaning on each other -- it’s enough, it’s too much, it’s not enough. Tony lets himself slump against Stephen. Here’s someone who can help carry him forwards when he’s at his worst, someone who knows him - if through magic - better than he knows himself, someone he trusts. “Stephen,” Tony says out loud, and it’s strange -- hah -- to say. “Fuck,” he says into the side of Stephen’s neck. Stephen smells like smoke and soap. This is it. This is it.

One of Stephen’s hands is running through his hair, light and soothing. “Ssh. We’ll figure it out.” Stephen, who’s more than a hundred years old, technically -- Stephen, who’s leaning against him, too. Stephen, who’s dragging his fingertips through the short hairs at the base of Tony’s neck, who’s humming against Tony. “I’ve loved you since I saw those futures,” Stephen says, anguished and deep and serious. “What you were willing to do for -- for the world.” His fingertips drag against Tony’s scalp; Tony shivers. “How could I not?”

Tony breathes in the smell of Stephen. Remembers all the awkward moments he’d assumed were because Stephen didn’t like him, and he could kick himself, except this -- this is good. He curls his fingers into the back of Stephen’s robes. He leans against Stephen. Stephen is -- he’s strong, stronger than Tony is, maybe; he can take Tony’s weight. Stephen’s fingers curl against the back of his neck and it’s good, it’s so good, this is it, this is -- Tony thought he’d be the one waiting longest, but no, the three numbers on his wrist, those have meant -- the whole time, those have meant it’s Stephen who’s been waiting, Stephen who spent decades before Tony ever met him trying to save the world. Stephen who checked millions of futures to land them in a timeline where Tony would get Peter back. Stephen who’s sharp and bright and acerbic and who gave up the Time Stone for him, Stephen who checks Peter for concussion symptoms and knows way too much about tea. Tony clings to him. How can he not?

“Gonna spoil you, Doc,” Tony mutters senselessly. He rubs his face against the side of Stephen’s neck, feels recklessly good at the way it makes Stephen tense up. “Even though you’re old.”

He’s heard Stephen laugh before. This is the first time he feels it, deep against his chest, and he loves it, he loves it so much.