Chapter Text
"Some words build houses in your throat. And they live there, content and on fire." —Nayyirah Waheed
The night before they plan to traipse through time, Tony stays over at the Avengers compound.
Tomorrow , Tony thinks, always comes far too soon and not nearly soon enough.
In the kitchen, before dinner, Natasha leans back against the counter with her denim-clad legs crossed at the ankles and sips her drink, her long, pale fingers cupped around the bowl of her glass. Her nails are cut short and painted a light lilac, but the polish on her index and ring fingers shows chips. One slim eyebrow slants at Tony as Nat asks, “You want a glass?”
The wine leaves a faint purple-red stain on her slightly chapped lips, a different wash of red than her hair that lingers in tired waves over her shoulders, and a different shade of purple, still, than that which lies smudged beneath her eyes. Endearing and oddly comforting, that’s what it is, seeing the evidence that even Nat, with her cache of smiles that resemble nothing so much as a garrote, and her body that is a finely-honed weapon the likes of which even Tony can’t build, is beautifully, incontrovertibly human.
“Nah. I’m good,” Tony replies, and waves his hand airily. He sets aside the tablet he’s been tapping away on and drops his chin into his hand. Lets his leg swing out and back like a pendulum from where it’s hooked around his chair rung. Returns Nat’s glance with a wag of his eyebrows.
“You know,” she says, lips quirked up in a motion so small it wouldn’t be called a smile on anyone but her, “it’s not considered polite to stare.”
Tony sees the movement and raises it a grin and a careless shrug. “Luckily, no one’s ever made the mistake of calling me polite.”
A startled laugh leaves Nat’s mouth, as ripe with honest joy as summer days are long. ( No artifice , Tony thinks. Or perhaps he simply hopes. Thoughts, wishes, and hopes: a trinity.) The sound of it, as real as the whisper of lake wind shaking through leaves, sings in Tony’s ears, a melody half-forgotten. Half-remembered? It curls feline in his chest and rumbles a contented purr.
It’s a privilege, isn’t it, to be the cause of such a laugh?
This...This is how Natasha should always sound.
He wonders briefly which Natasha he’s playing witness to in this moment, this moment that will never come again. He recalls one spring when his parents visited the then-USSR without him. His mother brought back a set of matryoshka dolls for him; even wrapped them in pretty patterned paper that felt cool beneath his fingertips as he stroked it. Of course, he’d been too impatient to treat the paper with much care and opted to tear it open as quickly as he could. He pictures, now, his mother’s indulgent smile as she sat on the edge of his bed and watched him. He pictures, now, his mother’s flaxen hair and his mother’s eyes and the gentle drift of her fingers while she smoothed his hair off his forehead, and he examined the small limewood figures with their bright paint, awash all the while in a child’s blissful ignorance of how ephemeral everything is.
The baby, the tiniest doll, was always Tony’s favorite. He told himself it was the best, most real of all the dolls, like the smallest, most real part of himself that Tony keeps nested inside larger layers of identity. Morgan has the whole set of dolls now—all except for the smallest doll, which Tony carries in his pocket. The set has a place of honor on the bookshelf in Morgan's bedroom, right next to a photograph of him, her, and Pepper sticking out their tongues and making silly faces. He wishes he could give Morgan her other grandmother so easily, too.
The grief for his mother is old now, time-softened and tinted in cream and sepia hues.
Occasionally, though, it sharpens; grows claws that tear at Tony’s tender insides.
The missing his mother, however, the desire for a single day more in her company, well, that remains his companion.
“I missed—” You. The word surfaces effortlessly in his mind only to drown in his mouth.
“Yes?” Natasha says, giving him no quarter, and he has to admire her for that.
He loves them all, these women with vibranium in their spines.
After straightening in his seat, Tony tries again: “If I had a sister…” He coughs and sends Nat an apologetic look for his inadequacy.
As Natasha intercepts it, she’s already crossing the kitchen, moving toward him, graceful, and on quiet feet. “If I had a brother…” Her hand hovers in the air near his right shoulder, and Tony stares up at her, the breath suspended in his lungs.
No matter how hard he wishes, he can never give Maria to Morgan, who deserves all the love and security that exist in the world. Everything he wanted so desperately as a boy and couldn’t find. Morgan loves her Uncle Rhodey, and she’s met the others, but they don’t hold a significant place in her life. Maybe, if they survive tomorrow, that can change. Maybe it should change. Roots, community, and family matter; he wants them for Morgan. For her, there can’t be too much.
After everything or maybe because of it, these are his people. Still.
Natasha’s head tilts a silent question at him, and Tony dips his chin in answer. Her hand settles, small and warm, petal-soft, at the back of his neck.
He thinks of Titan, then, and pictures an eager puppy of a boy he desperately wishes he could fold in his arms. He thinks of the boy he couldn’t save, the one who never had the chance to be a man. He thinks of lost chances and words unspoken. He thinks of Morgan and her declaration that she loves him 3000. He thinks of ash in the wind, and his own empty, grasping, impotent hands.
He thinks of all these things as Natasha looks back at him steadily with something unfathomable in her green eyes, and the thoughts give him enough courage to speak. “You do have one,” Tony replies, and squeezes Nat’s hand with his own, “or like, maybe a very distant cousin you see once a year—or something."
“Tony.” An eye-roll.
He has never known when to be quiet. “If you want him, I mean.”
“Shut up, Tony. I want him.”
“Oh. Well, okay, then. Glad we got that all settled, Nat.”
Shoes squeak on the kitchen tile, drawing their attention. Tony cranes his neck and catches sight of Steve—tall, blond, Caribbean-eyed, broad in the best-worst way Steve—who stands one slim degree away from being a cliché because he really is that rarest of creatures: a good person, damn him. He’s dangerous, as well, though. It’s dangerous, how his sweat-darkened tee sticks to the impossible width of his chest. Kill Bill sirens blare in Tony’s head, but he doesn’t rip his gaze away as he should.
(There’s always a “but.”)
Steve hooks a water bottle from the fridge, uncaps it, holds it to his wholesome, sin-pink mouth, and drinks, head tipped back, a single hand melded to the bone at his hip, and Tony, oh, Tony, he wants to be that hand. Or the water bottle. Either will do. He isn’t picky. Thirsty motherfucker , Tony thinks, worrying his lip with his teeth while he watches the long, slow, nearly obscene flex of Steve’s throat as he swallows.
Nat’s hand on Tony’s neck twists into a sharp pinch. When he glances back at her, her expression is all-knowing, and her eyes dance with laughter.
“Nope. No, fuck you, Romanoff,” Tony says, sliding his lower jaw to the side. “I take it back.”
“Mm-mm,” Natasha says, removing her hand from his neck and slowly shaking her finger back and forth, “Family’s family, Stark. No take-backs. It’s way too late for that now.”
“Too late for what?” Steve asks, eyeing them carefully. Drops of water gleam on his lower lip. At the sound of his voice, Tony’s pulse picks up speed.
“Too late for everything,” Tony answers before Natasha can speak up.
Steve stands there, untouchable, one hip to the counter, all pink-cheeked flush of exertion and the stuff of both Tony’s dreams and Tony’s nightmares, gaze thoughtful as it tic-tocks back and forth between Tony and Natasha. His expression remains considering as he rubs at the vulnerable skin of his wrist. Why won’t he stop touching himself? Tony wonders. Luckily, Steve doesn’t force the issue and push for clarification.
(And it is too late; Tony wasn’t lying about that. Once upon a time, long ago and far away, these people made homes in Tony—fit themselves inside the curved collagen and calcium architecture of his ribs.
Though their bonds have stretched and even turned brittle, they have never fully broken.
He won’t be able to evict them. He doesn’t even want to anymore.)