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“Show him,” Natasha says after SHIELD has taken the army of biohazard threats away for quarantine, nudging Steve in Tony’s direction. Steve shoots her a look like she just told him to walk the plank and get eaten by a shark, and she fixes him with clever green eyes. “You can’t wear that helmet all day. We all live in the same house.”
“What?” Tony asks shortly, interrupting their silent conversation, the secret language they came back from Washington with. It’s an unpleasant emotional cocktail of I knew Romanoff first so back off, Rogers and why doesn’t Steve have a secret language with me, we’ve been getting along for a whopping three years.
“He was within range,” Natasha explains, marginally helpful. Tony would be concerned that Steve is hiding some sort of traumatic head injury beneath his helmet, but she only seems amused, so he trusts that Steve isn’t seriously wounded.
Tony turns to him. “Unless you grew a pair of devil horns, I won’t bat an eye, Rogers. Ten bucks. Come on.”
Steve sighs and unclasps his chin strap, then pulls off his helmet and makes Tony a liar.
No devil horns—just a pair of little, delicate white wings on the sides of his head, near his temples where the wings on his helmet sit. Natasha is biting a smile and Steve looks half miserable, half expectant, but what on god’s green earth is Tony supposed to say?
“Okay,” he says slowly, patting down his armour. “Iron Man doesn’t carry cash. Do you want FRIDAY to e-transfer you or can you wait until we get back to the Compound?”
The wings that had been stiff and still on either side of Steve’s head relax as his mouth curls in a reluctant smile, which piques Tony’s interest because the wings are responsive, and he’s sinking his teeth into that fact.
“Save your ten bucks, Tony,” Steve says, fond and exasperated. “Let’s just go.”
-
While Bruce makes himself useful and takes Steve into the lab to make sure the wings are a temporary phenomenon that won’t harm him, Tony has other ideas. He wants to know if those wings are better at giving Steve away than his expression and body language are.
Tony decides to start by pissing him off.
He finds Steve stretched comfortably across the sofa after dinner with a blanket and the Hemingway memoir belles-lettres he’s been reading, in a worn-in sweater and a pair of gray sweatpants loose and low on his hips. His wings are unfurled and relaxed, and he looks so peaceful and cosy Tony almost thinks twice about bothering him, but then Steve looks up and spots him, wings perking up, and it’s too late for him to turn around and leave him alone.
All in the name of science, Tony supposes.
“Hi,” Steve says easily, shuffling his legs to make room for Tony next to him. Tony settles in. “Did you want to watch a movie?”
“Before we do that—” Tony pulls ten one-dollar bills from his pocket and waves them at Steve, then leans forward and tucks them into the waistband of Steve’s sweats. His fingers graze Steve’s hip bones, a trail of soft blazing warmth that he elects to ignore. “Look at that, I’m debt free.”
He does not expect Steve to flush a pretty pink as he pulls the bills from his waistband, his wings fluttering, but now that he thinks about it, he can’t remember the last time Steve was annoyed with him or even the last time Steve really got on his nerves.
“Enough for two coffees,” Steve comments, setting the money on the coffee table.
“You think ten bucks can buy two coffees in New York?” Tony teases, and Steve’s wings flutter again. “Better bet me on something else.”
Steve tugs his blanket over his book. “Bet you don’t know what book I’m reading.”
“A Moveable Feast,” Tony says, nestling more comfortably into the sofa. “Too easy. Next.”
Steve shows him the cover of the book with a little grin. “Guess coffee’s on me tomorrow, then.”
“It’s a date,” Tony says as he’s reaching for the television remote to put on a movie from their queue, before he can catch himself and realise that those aren’t the best words to use. It’s nothing new—they get coffee and lunch all the time these days, but out of the corner of his eye, he sees Steve desperately trying to smooth down his beating wings.
Up close, Tony can see that the feathers of his wings are soft and neat, the shape of angel’s wings. He almost wishes Steve would fall asleep again like he sometimes does when their movie marathons run long and late, so he could touch them and find out if they feel as soft as they look.
-
Tony actually does see Steve mad the next day.
They drive down to Manhattan together in the morning with a very odd mix of Marvin Gaye and Black Sabbath, for the Stark Industries board meeting Tony has at the Tower. Steve said he would come with because his favourite art store is a few blocks over, and they could get that coffee afterwards because he’s a man of his word.
After Tony’s board meeting, Steve is waiting for him in the Tower’s front lobby wearing a baseball cap to cover his wings, with two coffees in front of him and a big paper bag stamped with the art store’s logo. His expression is hard.
“Hey, thanks for waiting,” Tony says, giving him a questioning smile as he picks up one of the coffees, and Steve stands up to be at his eye level and gives him a tight smile back. Tony finds himself wishing he could see Steve’s wings. He nods towards Steve’s bag instead. “What’d you get?”
“Mostly new inks, and a sketchbook with black pages and some white pencils to go with it,” Steve says as they head out towards the garage.
“Alright, I’ll bite,” Tony says when they step into the garage, out of eyeshot and earshot with only security cameras around. “What’s wrong with you?”
Steve gives a little shake of his head at first and Tony reaches out to lift his baseball cap off his head. Steve’s wings are pressed back flat against the sides of his head, taut and defensive, and Tony gets the feeling that isn’t a good sign. There’s none of the fluttering that had been going on since last night.
“Come on, winghead,” Tony coaxes, chucking him lightly under the chin with the baseball cap. “Who pissed off America’s sweetheart?”
“I got into a disagreement with two of your staff,” Steve finally says, the tense lines of his feathers softening as he gazes into Tony’s eyes, bright and intent. “They were being awful about you and I couldn’t stand by.”
“Of course you couldn’t,” Tony sighs. He doesn’t even have to ask what they said because it’s been the same for years, on and off and back and forth, people who don’t buy Iron Man and the Avengers: they call him selfish, greedy, egomaniacal, a phoney who thinks he can make up for what he did by zipping around the world in a shiny metal suit. It’s water off a duck’s back, to him, but Steve and his little wings clearly have a problem with it. “You know I don’t care what they say behind my back, right? I don’t need you defending my honour.”
“I care,” Steve insists, and his wings are flattening again. “They don’t know you at all. You’re generous, and smart, and everyone is lucky to know you. They—”
“Okay,” Tony agrees, just to get those wings to unstick themselves from the sides of Steve’s head. “Okay, they’re wrong. As long as you know me though, I’m all good. Seriously.”
He means that last part. Steve’s opinion does mean something to him, definitely more than some SI employees he doesn’t know the name of, and the fact that he would do this for him—
Tony doesn’t know what Steve sees in his face right then, but his wings go lax with a quiver. Tony has to resist reaching out and touching them again.
“Okay,” Steve repeats after him, allowing himself a small smile. “Let’s go home, then.”
-
Tony sees Steve sad the day after that, which he never wanted.
He hates Steve’s kicked puppy look and the thought that the Avengers aren’t enough to make him happy, to fill the same echoing gulf in his heart that they had filled in Tony’s. It’s not personal. Tony doesn’t like not being able to fix a bad thing, that’s all.
“I was just with Wanda. She misses her brother,” Steve says, his wings drooping. It’s harder than usual to see Steve sad because he’s usually so good at keeping the worst of it bottled up, unlike Tony, whose emotions always come spilling over in one way or another, but the droopy wings make it nearly impossible. Steve glances at him and seems to come back into himself. “Sorry. You didn’t come to the kitchen to see me all like this.”
Tony can’t help himself this time. He lifts one of Steve’s wings with a finger and watches them tremble at the touch. They really are as soft as he thought they would be.
“It’s alright,” he says. “It’s hard. That’s why we do this together.”
“You sound like me.” Steve manages to crack a smile, and Tony would wonder if he was just being polite if the tips of his wings didn’t lift up higher, giving him away. “Thanks, Tony.”
“I like being able to read you,” Tony blurts out, surprising himself. “We make a great pair on the field and all, but I don’t know what you’re feeling a lot of the time and you always pretend to walk away fine, so. The wings help.”
The wings flit, as if on cue.
“Well, I hope we can still be friends when the wings go away,” Steve says in that deadpan way of his, and it just reminds Tony of how far they’ve come, why he likes Steve so goddamn much. Tony’s gaze drops heavily to Steve’s mouth, always so soft and pink, and when he looks back up, Steve is trying to hide his beating wings again.
“Why are they doing that?” Tony asks, gesturing, his heart starting to pick up pace. The question seems braver than the answer.
Steve looks back at him, wide eyed and parted lips, and that’s answer enough for Tony, after knowing him for three years. He hopes, after what he does next, they’ll have another three years together and another and another and another.
Tony closes the distance between them and Steve doesn’t make a move to pull away. His wings are beating so fast Tony can almost hear them and Steve is blushing like mad, trying to still them.
“Don’t hide,” Tony tells him, his voice dropped low as he pulls Steve in by his shirt. “I like them. Cute.”
“Tony,” Steve whispers desperately, hands gripping Tony’s waist like he’s steadying himself, and he’s so lovely right now, so near and dear, closer than he’s ever been, and Tony has to kiss him.
“I want to know how you’re feeling all the time,” Tony murmurs in between kisses. “I want a secret language with you, I want to look at you and know what you want from me.”
“Yes,” Steve says, nodding and chasing his lips for more kisses, a sotto voce answer to a question Tony hadn’t asked out loud. “I want you all the time. I want to be with you and get to love you—”
Tony swallows the rest of Steve’s words because he can’t wait any longer, not now. They have so much time, the rest of their lives if Steve will have him for that long, to learn each other, to look at each other and know everything there is to know about another person.
“So you love me,” Tony says after, stroking over the delicate wings and watching Steve close his eyes and lean into the touch. “I knew it. No one else would’ve made that two hour trip with me down to Manhattan for no reason.”
Steve smiles, wings fluttering.