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Tony's first memory of Steve was being saved from drowning in a lake.
Steve was five, Tony was four, and it was one of those blistering hot summer days when school seemed infinitely far away. Steve was dragging a stick through the thin dirt near the open lake while Tony was thoroughly entertained by the drone he constructed from scrap materials from his father’s lab. It was haphazard and uncoordinated, but, of course, it worked because Tony made it himself.
He was entranced by the drone, running after it mindlessly and oblivious to his feet inching closer to the lake's edge.
“Tony, wait!” Steve shouted from behind him.
Then he fell into the lake, and the water stole his breath; it trapped his limbs, and flailing only seemed to drag Tony down further. From the bright rays filtering through the furthering surface of the water, he heard Steve’s panicked voice calling Tony’s name and yelling for Jarvis.
He continued to fall further into the lake, gravity never feeling so inevitable before, and his head started to hurt, his lungs bloomed with pressure, and he felt the mud curl around his ankles.
Just as nothingness touched him and he took one last useless breath, Steve was there, hooking his arms under Tony’s and dragging him toward the surface.
He was brought up in thick pulses as Steve pumped his legs like a tadpole growing legs.
It was bright again, and the sun’s heat slapped his face. Tony gasped in the air only to get a tiny breath in among all the water he had consumed, but it was still enough air to return some clarity to his mind. With every hacking cough and frenzied breath in, Tony regained more of his senses: first, the sensation of wet clothes on his skin and Steve’s hands grabbing his torso, then the scent of the lake’s musk, and finally, the beige of dirt.
“Anthony!” Jarvis shrieked, and Tony saw him dashing toward the lake's edge. He hauled Steve and Tony in like two dripping wet sacks of corn.
Never had dry dirt on wet skin felt so right, and Tony heaved in breath after breath.
“You’re alright. Just breathe. You’re alright,” Jarvis soothed. Tony nodded the best he could to tell him he was okay.
Then the worry returned to Jarvis’s voice. “Steve, you’re going to be okay. Use this inhaler for me. Big, long breaths.”
As Tony’s breaths calmed, he heard more of the unsettling whirring noise coming from Steve. Steve had asthma. He knew that because Steve had shown him the white pipe-like object he put to his lips when they played tag, but never before had he looked so pale and deathly, like he was starved of life.
Later, when the air was no longer a privilege, Tony learned that Steve had the worst asthma attack of his life and was driven to the emergency room in an ambulance. Mrs. Rogers prohibited him from ever going near a lake again.
—-
Ms. Rogers worked as the chef at the Stark mansion and lived with Steve on the West side, while Tony lived with Jarvis and his parents (if they weren’t in Calcutta, Dubai, or London) on the East side.
Tony quickly developed a tolerance for his parent’s absence. On his fourth birthday, Maria and Howard were in San Francisco, and Jarvis–the butler who was told to deliver the news–expected Tony to cry or throw a tantrum, but the boy just said, “Okay, but you’ll be there, and that’ll be enough.” Jarvis’s professional facade cracked hearing that, and he wished Tony would wail and beg for his parents, for anything resembling a familial bond, but his face remained apathetic.
Howard and Maria Stark were no parents, only two who didn’t care enough to love their child.
Not that any child deserved to be deserted, but Jarvis knew Tony was an exceptional child, a child any sane parent would beam with pride for. Tony was terrifyingly intelligent; math and science were woven into his DNA, and even before turning five, he had surpassed Jarvis’s intelligence. It was like watching the future grow up. His wisdom, however, was fitting of a child. Tony would run in places he shouldn’t be running, pick up junk from the ground because it was “pretty,” and leap into trouble wherever he went. His intelligence, combined with his love for messing with his butler, was a terrifying combination, and never had Jarvis been pranked so viciously by robots.
Very rarely, Tony would ask Jarvis where his parents were in a fragile voice that shattered the butler. The boy was lonely.
So Jarvis introduced him to Steve.
While Tony was a boy brimming with energy, telling Jarvis to look when he swung the monkey bars or made a circuit board, Steve was a bit more subdued. He was just as kind as he was steadfast and loved drawing and playing with dirt.
Despite the two being oil and water, they quickly fell into a friendship.
They spent all summer together, and once the heat had simmered down, they ventured out into the garden.
“Tony- no, you can’t go over there. Jarvis said you can’t,” Steve told Tony, who was trying to get the roly-poly on the other side of the fence. “He said there’s poison ivy over there.”
“But Steve, I want it,” Tony said, fixating on the roly-poly crawling further away. He turned to look at Steve with his downturned big brown eyes–eyes he used to get what he wanted from Steve. “I’m gonna get it,” Tony decided, and Steve knew that when Tony set his mind on something, he was an undeterrable force.
“I’ll get it for you then. Let me try.” Steve rolled down his sleeves and carefully reached over the fence and through the leaves of three. To reach over the tall fence, he had to get on his tiptoes and reach his entire torso over, so Steve gripped the fence and inched himself closer to the roly-poly. The pointed tip of the white wooden fence dug into his stomach, which meant one wrong move, and he would be in a world of pain.
They both waited with baited breaths until Steve finally grabbed the insect in his hands and started moving himself back over the fence. Tony leaped in excitement and helped Steve back to the right side of the fence.
“Did the poison ivy get you?” Tony asked, and Steve shook his head. He was just happy that Tony didn’t get hurt by it.
He handed the gray roly-poly to Tony’s dirt-stained hands with poorly concealed pride.
“Here!”
“Awesome,” Tony said and cradled the insect in his hands. He beamed and looked up at Steve like he’d given him the sun.
There was dirt caked on Steve’s hands, his abdomen ached from leaning over the fence, and he felt an asthma attack burgeoning in his lungs, but in front of Tony, he couldn’t care. “Anything else you want- if you want anything else. I’ll get it for you, Tony,” Steve said and meant it.
–
Among the benefits of working as a chef for the Starks was a full tuition pay for Steve to attend the private school in the city. It was unbelievable when Sarah Rogers first heard, but as she worked, it seemed like a fair exchange for living in the mansion 24/7 with close to no vacation days.
The girl students wore maroon kilts, and the boys wore slacks that had to be ironed daily according to the dress code. Steve didn’t mind them as much as Tony did, who made Jarvis run a marathon trying to get him into the uniform every morning.
Tony was a year younger than Steve, but he skipped a grade because, well, he was a child prodigy. So they were placed in the same fourth-grade class with Ms. Cotter, who removed marbles from a jar every time the students weren’t listening.
Even as nine-year-olds, they understood their differences. Steve was the poor and short kid with a dozen and more medical conditions, and Tony was the rich genius that, for some reason, was friends with the scrawny kid. Their entire dynamic was gasoline for bullies.
“Steve, I dare you to run around the playground without your inhaler,” One of the bullies taunted, and his surrounding cronies agreed. The main bully hailed himself as the leader because he was the tallest of the crowd, and the rest followed him like toilet paper stuck to a shoe.
“I shouldn’t,” Steve said and backed away from them, knowing ignoring them would end this the quickest.
They hissed with laughter, “Aw, he’s scared that he’ll die.”
Steve curled into himself and tried to keep backing away from them.
Then, Tony said with his born confidence, “You’re just being mean. Shut up, shut up.” He stood in front of Steve and stared them down, “You’re only scared because Steve is a million times better than you.”
Being insulted by the kid a year younger than him must have struck a chord. The bully’s face grew red, and he spit in Tony’s face, “My mom says you’re gonna be an omega anyway. She can sense it. You’re gonna be one of those bitches.”
The other kids cackled, but that hit Tony right where it hurt the most. He knew what an omega was; he had heard it in passing by adults, stories, and conversations, but never had that being an omega been a bad thing, something to fear, something to detest and pray not to be. And apparently, Tony was going to be one.
Out of nowhere, a fist flew into the bully’s face, crashing him into the black asphalt and eliciting startled gasps. It was Steve, blind with rage and holding back tears of no one emotion.
From then on, the bullies didn’t come for them as often, but their words stuck with him. For the first time, Tony noticed who was an omega and who wasn’t. Jarvis wasn’t; he was a beta. His parents also weren’t; they were both alphas. Ms. Cotter was a beta with an alpha husband, and Ms. Rogers was a beta. Tony had to weed out the omegas by their scent in other places because there were none in Tony’s world.
They weren’t abundant, so Tony would stare whenever he found one. Many had a baby on their hip, sometimes two, and the older ones worked in lines at grocery stores or cleaned malls and libraries. One time when Tony was in the library looking for physics books, he saw an alpha yelling down an omega. The omega’s back was curved like a frightened dog’s tail, and she apologized, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I apologize.”
Everywhere Tony looked, “omega” was a synonym for “weakness.”
—
“So Jarvis tells me you might be an omega.”
Tony froze and resumed picking at his fingernails. They were covered in motor oil and sawdust from the garage lab, and Tony dragged his fingernails underneath the other to coax the dirt.
Howard had returned from his month-long business trip and immediately called Tony down to dinner to talk. And by talk, he meant he would talk while Tony listened.
He sneered, “I see it. You’re too small for your age—what’re you, ten?— and those eyes,” he looked disgusted, "don’t have the fierceness of an alpha.”
By then, Tony knew that most people could detect a child’s designation long before they presented. Alphas were larger, betas next, and finally omegas, and alphas generally had sharper eyes while omegas had softer, rounder ones. Very rarely would alphas and omegas prove these stereotypes false.
“I’m not,” Tony mumbled.
“What’s that? Can’t even speak like an alpha.” Howard said derisively from the end of the table as if Tony's existence was less than a joke.
Tony stopped picking his fingernails. What right did his father have? Waltzing into the house for the first time in a month, having the audacity to pretend he cared about his son, cared what he was or wasn’t.
Tony snapped, “I SAID I’M NOT.”
Omegas were weak, and Tony wouldn’t be weak; he would be an alpha.
He slammed his hands down on the silverware and ran out of the dining hall, fuming and eyes throwing daggers at anyone he passed through the halls, mostly maids and business partners.
He winded through the familiar halls to Steve’s room and flung open the door without knocking.
Steve dropped the colored pencils he was organizing. “Tony, what the heck-“
“I hate him, I hate him, I hate him,” Tony grit out through his teeth.
Steve nodded, cleaned up his pencils, and beckoned him to sit beside him. Tony hesitated, not wanting to let go of his anger, but eventually trudged onto the bed.
“Come ‘ere. He’s a jerk.”
“Yeah, he’s a jerk.”
“A huge jerk, a real asshole.”
“Asshole through and through.”
Gradually, Tony’s anger mellowed, and he rocked into Steve’s shoulder. “He said I’d be an omega.”
Steve understood, “You know that’s not a bad thing.”
“Shut up,” Tony snapped, “everyone knows they’re weak.”
“I don’t think so. I think everyone's strong in their own way,” he steadied Tony’s rocking with a hand on his shoulder.
Tony shook his head, “You sound like a school counselor," he teased. "But I can’t be an omega, Steve, I just can’t,”
“My mom says omegas and alphas are perfect for each other, so then I’ll be the omega, and you can be my alpha. ” Steve said. He smiled brilliantly like he just proposed a Nobel prize-winning solution. There was no fog in his demeanor. He was completely and utterly genuine.
—
Tony was thirteen, and Steve was fourteen when they started high school, both awkward freshmen, as much as they tried to hide it.
When they were informed of the science fair that would be happening, Steve was sure that Tony would win. There was no way he wouldn’t. Steve would bet money that Tony could have won as a five-year-old.
Tony was delightfully gleeful, clearly thinking the same thing. He was already getting started on his project, something about a computer code that Steve gave up trying to understand from the get-go.
On late nights while Steve was still struggling to finish the homework Tony had long finished, the light of the computer reflected Tony’s eyes that were shimmering with excitement. Sometimes Steve would just watch him work in awe.
On one of those days, they were in the empty library, and Tony stretched his back from long hours of coding. He looked over at Steve, who was finishing an English essay on Frankenstein (Tony couldn’t stand the book’s looping nuances, but Steve loved it).
“Steve,” Tony called, “If I win the science fair,” he paused for dramatic effect, “you have to give me a kiss.”
Steve paused, and his reading glasses slid down his nose and clattered on the floor. Tony cackled, intending it as a joke, and quickly took a picture of Steve’s frozen expression.
Steve picked up his glasses carefully and placed them back on his nose. He stared at Tony through them, and the intensity of his blue eyes caught him off-guard, and Tony stopped laughing.
“Alright. I promise.”
There was a shift in the air around them. “I mean that as a joke- you know,” Tony tried to backtrack, but then the image of him kissing Steve flitted through his mind like a dream. It might not be so bad, Tony thought. “Okay,” he finally said.
“Okay, then,” Steve smiled and returned to his book.
Unsurprisingly, Tony won the fair by a landslide.
“It’s just a rudimentary AI,” Tony said with a grin, but it was far from rudimentary. It could understand jokes, puns, and sarcasm, the first AI to grasp humor to this degree.
Steve and Tony had spent hours and hours inputting their jokes and banter into its library. The result was a snarky AI that laughed at Tony’s dry, sarcastic humor.
The teachers gossiped about the genius of Tony Stark even more than usual, “With that brain? He’ll be an alpha for sure.” “One of those alphas striding through life with a dozen companies in one hand and a dozen omegas in the other.” And as much as Tony tried to hide it, overhearing those conversations that finally assumed he would present as an alpha fueled his ego.
Riding on the high, Tony ran up to Steve after the fair and dragged him to the empty boy’s bathroom.
“Where’s my kiss?” Tony asked.
Steve blushed furiously, and his voice was raspy, “A deal’s a deal.”
He leaned in, and everything seemed to be in slow motion. Steve leaned in like a knife cutting through the tension. Did I have garlic bread today? The thought fluttered through Tony’s mind but was interrupted by Steve’s chapped lips on his. The softness of their lips felt so right as if it was erasing everything bad that came before it.
Steve pressed his lips against Tony’s for another second before separating. “Congratulations, Tony,” he whispered.
—
A month later, Tony woke up with a stomach ache deep in his abdomen, its waves of discomfort crashing through him every few seconds. The past week he had also been incredibly irritable and cried more times than he would ever admit, and he had snapped at Jarvis and ignored Steve for the smallest things.
Feeling pissed, he refused to mention it to Jarvis or Steve and attended school as usual. History class was insufferable, and all Tony wanted to do was go back in time and punch Christopher Columbus and his stupid hair.
“Why so pissed?” Steve tried to ask, but Tony responded with a grunt as another wave of discomfort coursed through him.
To make it worse, rumors about Angela in 10th grade presenting as an omega were running rampant. Apparently, she had been absent for a week and came back to school smelling like an omega. Some were saying she would be sent away to a boarding school, but everyone seemed to agree she wouldn’t be here for long. Tony saw her in the halls when the rumors were especially horrible, and her eyes were red and scratched as if sleep was far away. Neither Steve nor Tony could do much about it when the administration forced her to clean out her locker and leave.
Tony somehow made it to the last period, which was–thankfully–English with Steve. Steve glanced at Tony throughout the lesson worriedly, not paying attention to Slyvia Plath, despite her being his favorite poet.
“Stark, are you unwell?” Mrs. Ross’s stern voice cut through the room, “You look feverish.”
“I-,” There was a hot fuzziness in Tony’s mind, and he couldn’t think of the words he wanted to say.
Mrs. Ross walked towards him, put her hand on his forehead, and her eyebrows knit together. “You’re about to go in heat.”
The classroom clattered, and the students were whispering widely. “Shit, Tony’s an omega?”
The confirmation that Tony was an omega killed something inside him, the desperate hope that he would present as an alpha that Howard and Maria would be proud of, and they would tell him they loved him. Somewhere inside himself, Tony knew that he would never be an alpha, but the confirmation killed his last dredge of hope.
“Mr. Rogers, bring him to the infirmary and have the nurse call home.”
He dug the heels of his palms into his eyes sockets as he let himself cry.
The first heat was said to be the transition phase. It meant that Tony was miserable non-stop for three days, with unrelenting cramps and scorchingly hot skin. It also gave him time to wallow in this discovery. He refused to look at his computer or DUM-E, the robot he was working on, because they were no longer his.
Jarvis had informed him that Howard was cutting his business trip short after hearing Tony’s news and would be there as soon as his heat ended. There was no doubt that Howard would take away all of Tony’s inventions and send him to some small omega boarding school and marry him off to some investor as soon as it was legal. Jarvis’s pitying expression only confirmed that.
“I let Steve know you’re okay,” Jarvis said through the door.
“Mhm,” Tony said, gripping his pillow tightly for comfort.
As soon as his heat lifted, Tony sneaked past Jarvis and to Steve’s room.
He knocked, and the door swung open.
“Tony!” Steve hugged him but immediately tensed when he caught Tony’s new scent. “You… really are an omega.”
Shit, Tony was going to cry again, “Yeah, no shit.”
“Uhm. You smell… good.”
Tony glared at him.
“Sorry.” Steve let him go and closed the door behind them.
Tony wouldn’t cry; he promised himself that before leaving his room. He was going to say goodbye to Steve with a grin, maybe bitch about his father a bit, and he was going to convince him that he would be okay. Completely, perfectly fine.
“Well, I guess all of this is no more,” Tony said. “But I suppose it’s not that much of a surprise. People always said I would be an omega anyway.”
“Tony-” Steve started, but Tony cut him off because whatever he said would make him cry.
“Can you try to make sure Howard doesn’t destroy DUM-E? If you’re quick, you can knick it from my room while Howard yells at me.” He was rambling. “And if that doesn’t work, we can loop Jarvis into it, and he’ll get it to you somehow-”
“No,” Steve said. He was staring directly at him.
That was unexpected. Tony had assumed Steve would do anything he asked of him out of pity. “What do you mean, “no”? I don’t think I’m asking for much,” the tears threatened to fall.
“No, Tony. Because this is bullshit. Complete bullshit.”
Tony gave up; the tears were angrily flowing out now. “Yeah? Well, what’re you gonna do about it? Nothing’s mine anymore because I’m not an alpha- not even a beta. I can’t do anything at all because apparently, I’ll never be strong enough or loud enough or smart enough. If I mess up just once it’s gonna be enough proof that I was never capable. So really, nothing matters, nothing fucking matters.”
“No, Tony, you can’t just give up like that.”
Tony forced out a laugh through his tears. “It’s beautiful how much you believe those things. Those picturesque inspirational quotes to “never give up” or “you can do anything you set your mind to.” He yelled, “Well, Steve. This might be news, but not everything is a pretty Pinterest post.”
Steve returned his volume, “But you can’t believe that everything you are is now dust because you just happened to present as an omega? Why- You’re you… so you might not understand how amazing you are, but I do. You’re insanely smart—like scary smart—not even adults can compare, and you’re passionate and vibrant, and none of that’s changed.”
Tony had so much to say, yet no strength left. His shoulders shook, and he held his breath to try to hide his sobs in vain.
Steve lowered his voice and hugged him tight. “I’m sorry.”
“Just- DUM-E.”
“Shh..” he soothed, “I’ll get DUM-E and keep it safe, but you have to come back and get it. I’ll hang onto it until you come back.”
Tony looked skeptical.
“Swear by it, Tony.”
A commotion downstairs snapped them out of the moment, “ANTHONY,” Howard yelled, “COME DOWN HERE.”
“Shit shit, I have to go,” Tony pushed Steve’s arms away, but Steve grabbed him.
“Tony, promise me.”
“Okay,” Tony said, “I promise.” And that was the last time Steve would see Tony.
—
Steve later learned that Tony was sent to a boarding school out of state. Now that Tony no longer lived at the Stark mansion, there was no one need for Sarah Rogers to stay 24/7, so she and Steve had to leave.
She found another job in Brooklyn as a sous chef at a restaurant, but that meant Steve had to change schools.
In a matter of a month, Steve lost everything that connected him to Tony other than DUM-E, which sat in his closet, carefully stored in a sealed box, waiting for its owner.
— 4 years later —
High school without Tony felt like stumbling through time.
Steve presented as an alpha which basically gifted him an entirely new body. It would gain muscle when he worked out, and most notably, it wouldn’t keel over with medical issues. That brought Sarah Rogers to tears of joy.
He made some friends, made a few enemies, dated two betas (neither longer than a month), joined the football team, became the quarterback, and graduated with an adequate GPA and outstanding scholarships.
He ultimately decided on Boston College. It had a great football team, and the campus was pretty, or at least it had seemed so in photos. And it made his Catholic mother happy, though she never pressured him.
“Flight 829 to Boston, now boarding,” a woman’s cracked voice sounded at the gate, but Steve wasn’t in a hurry. He wanted to wait until the line started to teeter out.
It was an early morning flight, and the airport was busy but not at its peak yet. People were minding their own business, checking their boarding passes and phones.
One omega girl sat next to him and glanced at Steve, probably checking him out, but he did no mind. Since Tony left, Steve hadn't been able to persuade his sense of smell that Tony wasn’t the only omega in the world. Logically, he understood what an omega smelled like, but it never quite clicked.
As Steve checked his boarding pass, a tuft of short brown hair caught the corner of his eye.
Steve jolted and immediately stood from his seat, craning his neck around the crowds of people. He must have looked like an idiot, gaping and panicking in his large body, but it was instinctual.
Something about that tuft of hair felt like Tony’s: maybe it was the shade of brown or the way it curled toward the end. Steve left his bags and sifted through the people.
“Tony!” He tried, but no one answered his call. He tried again, but no one replied.
“Excuse me-” a voice said from behind, and Steve flinched.
“Are these your bags?” a man said, pointing at his luggage.
“Uh, yeah.” Steve shook himself out of his panic. “Sorry about that.”
He returned to his bags and unzipped a small hidden pocket in his suitcase.
Hiding DUM-E in his closet all these years had been difficult enough, and bringing it to college was near impossible. But leaving DUM-E there with his mother seemed wrong, so he had taken its hard drive and brought it with him.
He looked up and tried searching for Tony one last time in the crowd of people. Then he collected his luggage and boarded his flight.
——
The plane ride passed in slow minutes. Despite downloading a book on his phone prior, he couldn’t bring himself to read it. He stared out the plane window at the white clouds in the blue sky.
He finished unpacking that day and left for a run in the morning. He was mapping out potential running courses and didn’t realize how far he had run until he noticed a flag on a telephone pole that said in big, bold letters, “The Future is HERE! Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”
Tony would have loved to go there, the thought fluttered through Steve’s mind, and the sudden weight surprised him. Even after four years, thinking about Tony was like being stabbed by a dull tack. Steve may be an alpha, but he wasn’t oblivious to the reality of being an omega. In Boston, the epicenter of academia, omegas were scarce. Society had come a long way, and discrimination was no longer coded in laws but still prevalent in daily life.
After Tony left, Steve poured over the statistics. Eighty percent of omegas married immediately after high school, or more often, finishing school, and not even ten percent went to university. He had cried then, feeling suffocated by hopelessness, and he couldn’t even imagine how Tony felt.
The worst feeling was not even being able to imagine what Tony looked like now, after so many years had passed.
Across the street, he saw MIT students carrying a giant robot to class. They were laughing, and Steve’s chest constricted with pain. Maybe in a different universe, Tony would be laughing with them, heading to his class with his newest invention. He would blow the professors away with DUM-E, and no one would dare mention secondary gender. And maybe, Tony would run up to Steve and hug him from behind, ask him how his football practice went, and just maybe tiptoe to kiss him.
Steve turned and began running again. It was too dangerous to think about that.
He had just jaywalked the street when he heard someone, “Steve?”
It was the voice deeply etched into his memory.
“Tony?” Steve’s heart pounded in his throat as he turned around.
It was Tony, standing there with one hand half outstretched. He had those undeniable tufts of brown hair and eyes so deep you could fall in them. His lips curved into a smile, but before Steve could truly appreciate them, they crashed into each other’s arms.
Then Tony’s scent hit him. It had matured over the years into the sweet scent of an omega, but Tony made it beautiful with the slightest hints of coffee and motor oil. It was perfect.
“Tony- what,” he finally gasped out.
“Wait. Keep me- hold me just a little longer,” Tony whispered.
After an immeasurable amount of time, their grip on each other loosened, and Steve started brushing his fingers through Tony’s hair.
Tony pulled away and stared into Steve’s face. “It’s really you. I can’t believe this.”
“Me- me neither.”
“You know, I imagined this moment so many times.”
“Yeah?”
“I imagined I would see you in the streets or in a coffee shop or on the subway, and I rehearsed what I would say to you. So. Many. Times.”
Steve laughed at that.
“But I can’t seem to remember what I wanted to tell you.”
“That’s alright. I’m not letting you go anytime soon. We’ll have plenty of time.”
Some stranger on the street whooped at them to get a room, and Steve smiled at how quickly Tony’s face flushed red. “How ‘bout we get some coffee?”
“Yeah,” Tony nodded, “Let’s.”
—-
Steve handed Tony his ice latte and secretly treasured how his fingers curled around the cup.
“So uh. You’re an alpha.”
“I am. I presented about a year after you left. It made my Ma real happy, not because of any prejudices, but because all my medical conditions disappeared.”
Tony brightened, “So, no more asthma?”
“None.”
“Oh, thank goodness. Remember when you had an asthma attack because-”
“Because I had to drag you out of the lake? Course I do. You jumped around, calling me your hero for a month afterward,” Steve said.
They sat down at a small two-person wooden table in the corner and sipped their coffee.
“I almost didn’t recognize you. I mean, you’re like, six foot now.”
“Six two actually.”
“Holy shit. I can’t believe you used to be shorter than me.”
That gave Steve a smug grin, “Yeah? Not so scrawny anymore, huh?” He propped his elbows on the table and leaned forward. He got a wave of excitement when a subtle blush crept up Tony’s pretty cheeks. He wasn’t blind. He knew he looked good.
“Nuh-uh. You better keep your ego in check, Mr. Big-Strong-Alpha-Man. I bet you’re a jock. What is it? Football? Rugby? Basketball?”
“Football at Boston College.”
“I fucking called it,” Tony said triumphantly.
“But enough about me… I mean… what about you? If you don’t mind me asking, what happened after that?”
Tony took another sip of his coffee, and the mood took a turn. “Ah. Well, Howard was pissed, but I think you could’ve guessed that. He sent me to this boarding school for omegas in Maine, and it was… horrible. Like, so horrible I had to think of you and Jarvis to fall asleep without crying.”
“The other omegas weren’t so bad; honestly, they were exactly like me: scared and mostly angry. The professors were the worst, like actual human cockroaches, except for my home ec teacher. She probably gave me a dozen detentions just in the first semester and saw how miserable and bitter I was. So, she took me aside and told me to channel that anger into getting the fuck out of there. She got me chemistry and physics books and even smuggled a soldering iron. I spent years making an AI, and–I don’t even know how she did it–she snuck me out of the school, brought me to the state STEM fair, and told me to present like your life’s on the line, because it probably is. I did, and I won. An MIT admissions officer happened to be there, offered me a full scholarship, and now here I am.”
Steve was crying now, “I still- I still have DUM-E. I brought him with me.”
“I knew you would, Steve. You would rather die than break a promise.”
Steve nodded and wiped away his tears with the heel of his palm, “And I knew you could do it.”
“Don’t cry, Steve, don’t cry,” Tony patted his shoulder, “I’m never leaving again.”
They finished their drinks and slowly walked wherever their feet would take them, not wanting to discuss the future when the present was so beautiful.
“Do you remember the freshman science fair?” Steve asked.
“Mhm.”
“And I promised you a kiss if you won? Well, you just told me you won another fair.”
Tony put two hands on Steve’s shoulders and pulled him in, “And you would never break a promise, would you?”
“Never,” Steve said and leaned in for a kiss.