Work Text:
One ill-timed ass-grab: that’s all it takes.
They’ve just successfully taken down a bad guy, and the whole team is high on victory. Around them, journalists are already crowding to the be first ones to get the scoop, the cameras high and dry, the microphones right up in the Avengers’ faces. For once, Steve doesn’t mind the attention. After all, the streets may still be knee-deep in weird sludge, but the a madman who made the sludge is being loaded into a SHIELD helicarrier and all the buildings are miraculously whole. All the people are whole.
As Steve starts talking, he sees Tony approach from the corner of his eye. The billionaire has left his scratched-up armour behind and is dressed only in a tight fitting bodysuit that he seems to live in sometimes. Steve doesn’t mind that one bit because, well, his boyfriend is in really good shape. When he reaches Steve, he throws an arm around him while shooting him a cheeky grin. Steve can’t help but smile back. He’s happier than he can ever remember being.
And in that moment of victory, of pure, unadulterated bliss, Steve does something very, very stupid.
As Tony pulls him closer, Steve does what he always does: he cups his boyfriend’s ass and squeezes. It’s a movement so practiced, so natural, that he doesn’t even have to think about it anymore. Except… They’re not usually out in public when he does this, nor are they usually surrounded by so many cameras. Sometimes, Steve can still hear Bucky’s voice in the back of his head, telling him to think first. That would have been pretty useful right about now.
Because, though Tony and Steve have been an item for almost three months now, they haven’t made it public yet.
Steve freezes as soon as he realises what he’s done. Tony jerks in surprise, swinging his head around to survey his boyfriend with one raised brow and a smirk so dirty it makes Steve want to compulsively scrub something (that dick) clean. Instead, Steve acts like nothing happened, moving his hand up to a more appropriate body part and turning back to the cameras.
Really, that should have been that. But it isn’t.
The next morning, Clint saunters into kitchen during breakfast, with an enormous, shit-eating grin across his face. That, in and of itself, usually means trouble, but this time the sharpshooter is also hiding something behind his back, making trouble a certainty. From his seat at the table, Steve eyes Clint with no small measure of distrust, spoon full of porridge stilling halfway to his mouth. Next to him, Natasha seems to have noticed the grin, too. There’s something dangerously close to a smile on her face. She just loves a bit of trouble.
“Is everyone having a good morning?” Clint asks cheerfully.
That’s about the moment the others start realising there must be something going on. Bruce sets his cup of tea down carefully, as if ensuring that the only tea that will be spilled this morning is verbal (Steve learnt the phrase ‘spill the tea’ fairly recently and he’s convinced his mother would have absolutely adored it).
Thor, of course, answers the question honestly, “Yes, this is a very good morning,” while Tony downs his espresso like a shot of vodka, face twisting and gaze dead serious. He pours himself another cup, but never takes his eyes off Clint.
“What’s with the smiling, Legolas? Have they passed a law to turn all guns into bow and arrows?” he asks grumpily. Steve loves Tony before his third cup of coffee: there’s something infinitely endearing about the way he turns into something between an angry old man and a rebelling two year old when he’s sleepy.
Clint turns to him, grin widening impossibly further. Tony just narrows his eyes and starts to aggressively sip his coffee.
“Better than that,” Clint says.
He throws what he was holding behind his back onto the table with such a flourish that Steve almost expects it to be something like the Declaration of Independence. It isn’t, much to his dismay. It’s just a newspaper. Everyone at the table bends over to see what it says that has their friend grinning like a maniac. Steve feels the first tendrils of trepidation curling in his stomach.
From his place at the counter, Tony is still completely unbothered, “Why, what are the papers accusing me of this time?”
Just when Steve wants to tell Tony that he should be more careful with what he says in public if he wants to work on his image, Bruce’s head rises, shocked from the paper, allowing him to catch his first glimpse of the front page. He immediately swallows any criticism towards Tony about his public image.
Because, plastered across the front page of the New York Times, is a photo of Steve very clearly groping Tony’s ass.
“They’re saying Captain America owns your ass!” Clint tells Tony gleefully, causing him to spit coffee all over the kitchen floor. He’s at the table in two steps, snatching the paper up and reading the headline with narrowed eyes.
“CAPTAIN AMERICA GROPES IRON MAN,” he reads aloud, before turning around and winking at Steve, “He sure does!”
“I do not understand why this is newsworthy on Midgard. On Asgard there is often much sex after battle, but we do not record it to show to the public,” Thor tells Bruce, who’s listening with barely contained amusement.
Steve, for his part, hasn’t moved since he first laid eyes on the headline. Homosexual relationships might be legal these days, but he isn’t naïve enough to think everyone in world will just accept this. And no one is taking this seriously. Not even Tony, who knows exactly how damaging something like this can be to your image. Especially not Tony. Clint and him are loudly one-upping each other with sexual innuendos.
Suddenly, Natasha’s hand is on his shoulder and he looks up, hoping for some kindness. Or at least some common sense.
“Look on the bright side,” she says, “At least it’s a good picture.”
Steve drops his head into his hands. Maybe he can just dive back into the arctic and come back in 70 years when this has all blown over. Maybe then he can find friends who are actually supportive.
The next few days are marked by a series of press conferences about what has been informally dubbed ‘Ass-gate’. Both Tony and Steve come out as bisexual at a press conference and confirm their relationship in front of hundreds of journalists. Aside from Tony’s ill-timed quips (the ones that secretly always make Steve smile) and some hate mail from certain religious and nationalistic groups, it all seems to be going down surprisingly well.
Then the tide turns. Within a week, the media have decided that the Avengers are liars. Wild theories and conspiracies crop up all over the place, the one more outlandish than the next. Some people say there must be blackmail involved, others are saying that the whole relationship is a publicity stunt to make the Avengers more accessible to a younger audience.
After all, there’s no way Captain America, manly man, virtuous representative of the United States, is gay, right? And Tony Stark? The playboy? Mr. I’ve-slept-with-every-Victoria’s-Secret-Model, Mr. Genius Weapon Builder, Mr. I Shoot Things And Throw Out a One-Liner… He can’t be gay. It just doesn’t track.
And anyway, people say, both have been spotted on dates with women before. Pictures of Steve and Sharon, start circling and later of him and Peggy. Those last ones are painful. Then old videos of Tony start showing up, ones where he’s so drunk he can barely stand, but he somehow still manages to kiss a beautiful woman. This clearly means they can’t be gay. Right?
It seems like society, as a whole, has just decided bisexuality doesn’t exist.
Tony, of course, is absolutely scandalised. He’s just scandalised by the wrong thing.
“What do they mean I can’t be gay?” he whines, while waving dramatically at the headlines that hang in the air before him, “I’m too ‘manly’ to be gay? Do you know how hard my father would laugh at me being called ‘too manly’? And what does that even mean?”
He’s seated on a rolling chair in the middle of his lab surrounded by blue holographs of things Steve doesn’t recognise. There’s grease all over him and his hair is an absolute mess, but the way the blue light falls over him is so beautiful it almost makes Steve cry.
“Well, to be fair,” he says, from his perch by the desk where he’s trying to sketch the scene in front of him, “You aren’t gay. You’re bisexual.”
“Well, I know that! And they should too! It’s not like this is the first time I’ve slept with a guy, I haven’t exactly been secretive about it,” he squints over at Steve, “Why aren’t you more offended? They’re straight up saying you lied during the press conference.”
Steve’s pencil stills on his page as he stops drawing to look up a Tony. He frowns. He’s not quite sure why the news coverage isn’t offending him more. Maybe it’s because a part of him, the part born and raised in the early 20th century, was afraid that people’s opinions would be so much worse. Being openly called gay in a newspaper used to be something of a death sentence, but these days it seems he has to prove that he’s not straight. So much of his life has been spent trying to prove that he was as much a man as guys two times his size, it feels strange, now, to have confirmation of it coming from all sides.
He can admit though, it’s frustrating to hear people say he can’t possibly be in love with a man because he doesn’t seem gay. It does bother him. There’s just not much to be done about it.
“I’m not going to be angry because they don’t think I’m gay enough to grab a man’s ass,” he says eventually, then he winks, “Besides, we both know I do much more than just grab that ass.”
Tony pretends to act shocked, then zoofs over on his rolling chair, braking by grabbing onto Steve’s shoulders. The look on his face is somehow both sweet and horny.
“Hell yeah, you do,” he says.
It takes Steve a second to remember what it is he does, because Tony is busy being very distracting. He hops onto Steve’s lap, puts a finger under his chin and angles it up so he can plant a soft kiss on his lips. Then he moves down slowly, marking each inch with a small butterfly kiss. Steve’s eyes flutter closed at the touch of those soft lips on his neck, each kiss a bolt of the very best kind of static electricity. Just as Steve’s fingers are starting to tangle in Tony’s hair, the kisses stop. Steve opens disappointed eyes to see his boyfriend pulling back, a distant look in his eyes.
Oh no. Steve knows that look. It’s the epiphany look, the one that always leads to trouble. Steve grabs his boyfriend’s face with both hands, aiming the gaze back towards him (and hoping, maybe, to distract him with some spirited use of his tongue). He stills immediately when their eyes meet; because Tony’s are filled with a terrifying sort of madness.
“Tony…” he warns in his Captain America voice. Unfortunately, that tone doesn’t work on Tony, it only serves to rile him up.
Tony grins wide, all teeth and glinting mischief. He says, “I’ve got an idea.”
A soft groan escapes Steve as he drops his head back and stares at the ceiling. This must be some punishment from God for all the worry he put Bucky through when he was small. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
Tony is already halfway across the room, making images appear around him like some kind of magician.
“JARVIS, call Pepper, I need to ask her where she buys her Louboutins. Oh, and I’ve got a shopping list for you later! And-“
Something soft and warm unfurls in Steve’s chest, as if a muscle he’s been clenching all his life has suddenly been released. He can’t help the smile on his lips. Because, he suddenly realizes why he isn’t angry at the news coverage they’ve been getting. It’s because he doesn’t care what they all say. He gets to spend the rest of his life with this gorgeous, brilliant, eccentric man, and he’s looking forward to every single moment.
At the next Avengers event, Steve steps out of a black limousine wearing a tasteful purple-blue suit with a pink tie. A small pride flag is pinned onto his lapel. The coy smile on his face makes everyone wonder if he’s sitting on some kind of secret. Maybe it’s something to do with his date for the night. Ever the gentleman, he walks around to the other side of the car to open the door for her.
Out steps Tony Stark.
Cameras start flashing like crazy, there are audible gasps to be heard throughout the gathered crowd. Because, despite the controversy surrounding the supposed hoax and queer-baiting, despite the rumours that their relationship must have been a publicity stunt, Iron Man and Captain America have come as dates.
But it’s not just that. No, the Tony Stark that steps out of the limousine isn’t the normal, extravagant Tony Stark. It is an extra extravagant (that’s two whole extras, for those of us who are counting) Tony Stark.
The billionaire steps out wearing high stiletto heels, a mesh shirt and purple pants that have the words I LOVE DICK plastered down the side. An enormous bisexual flag flows from his shoulders like a cape.
Steve helps him out of the car, then takes his arm so they can walk the red carpet together, as if they were both born to do this. And for a moment, for them, it feels like they were.
The thousands of photos documenting the evening show Tony in his element: stirring the pot. He twirls over the dance floor with an immaculate Pepper Potts and wraps a grinning Colonel Rhodes in his flag like a burrito. Most of the pictures are of him and Steve together. In them, Tony is gesticulating wildly, while Steve gazes at him with the softest, most fond exasperation ever documented. Tony savours that expression like the first cup of coffee in the morning.
Even when journalists inevitably stick microphones up their noses in search of an interview, the couple steals the show.
“Is this gay enough, America?” Tony asks loudly. His eyes are cheeky over the brim of his glasses, but his smile is razor sharp.
One of the interviewers, probably well aware of how good Tony Stark is at dealing with the press, directs his question to Steve instead. The poor man won’t know what hits him.
“Mr. Rogers, can I get a comment on the rumours that your alleged relationship with Tony Stark is a marketing scheme chosen by your employers?” he asks.
For a minute, Steve just stares at the journalist as if waiting for the punchline of a joke. It doesn’t come. How thick is this guy? How thick is America? They’re out here in bisexual pride flags, hell, Steve is out there groping Tony in public and giving out statement about his sexuality. And still some people won’t believe he’s dating a man, because he…. Doesn’t look gay enough?
All the frustration he’s been hearing in Tony for the past week, the frustration that culminated in the outfit for this event, comes rushing into Steve all at once.
Something inside him snaps. He gives the interviewer a sickly-sweet smile. A brighter man might have run at the sight of it.
“I would like to reiterate that I am bisexual and that by the end of the night, I will be sucking Tony Stark’s dick,” he says, “And you may quote me on that.”
“Ooh, language, Captain!” Tony whispers, but somehow he looks hornier than Steve has ever seen him. Before his boyfriend gets a chance to dive into a horny rant, Steve is pulling him in for a kiss.
The kiss is full of heat and pent up frustration, but their hands are gentle and their bodies slot together as if they’re both part of a bigger whole. Despite the camera flashes and the scandalised looks, Steve has never felt more at home.
The world goes mad. But he doesn’t care, because he’s in love.