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A teeming wall of reporters, stretched from one end of the barricade to the other, waits for Tony when he takes one step outside of the theater. He pauses—no one seems to have spotted him just yet, not with Sersi holding their attention—and retreats back inside to take several deep breaths as he tries to steady himself.
He should have expected this. What just happened with Killian is something that no one could have expected. It’s huge. It’s a scandal. It won’t just be the reporters who were already present at the awards who’ll want a quote from him. He very much doubts that any other news source who hadn’t bothered on reporting on the VMAs wouldn’t have sent their own reporter after the debacle.
He takes one last deep breath, slides on a pair of sunglasses he’s taken to putting in his pocket after an interview at the Grammys earlier reported exclusively on how upset he looked after losing out on Artist of the Year, and goes outside. This time, he’s immediately spotted, Sersi having already continued on to her car and left, and he’s mobbed, people shouting at him for his opinion on the events of the night and how he feels about Killian and surely he must hate him now, right?
“I don’t want to talk bad about anyone,” he denies, pushing through the mob. Where the hell is Obie? He should be here to help him out. Maybe Jarvis is right, and he should think about hiring a bodyguard for nights like this.
“Tony! Tony!” someone else shouts. “How did you feel tonight?”
They’re not going to go away, he realizes. Not without a statement from him. And he can push and shove all he wants, but he’s still just a twenty-year old omega. Without Obie or someone else helping him out, he’s not getting out of here without saying something.
“I was excited,” he says, stopping and turning towards the person who’d asked. “I was excited to win Best Video by an Omega Artist, and then…” He trails off and shrugs. “I wasn’t so excited anymore. Aldrich Killian is a really popular artist. I thought it was part of the show. I didn’t think that would happen.”
“You must really be angry at him, huh,” the reporter says sympathetically, but Tony can see the greedy gleam in his eyes. He knows he’s just looking for a story as much as anyone else, preferably something about Tony Stark losing it after the VMAs.
Angry? He’s beyond angry. He’s furious, and devasted and humiliated. This was supposed to be a special moment for him. It wasn’t supposed to end with the microphone being ripped away from him and people booing him as Aldrich Killian listed his failures so he could praise Sersi instead. He’s incandescently furious at Killian for ruining something special—even if he’d just said what everyone else was thinking—and he’d like nothing more than to say something cutting into the microphone, something that’ll tear down everyone’s opinion of him, something that’ll make him feel just as small as Tony does.
But he can’t do any of that. He’s an omega. Killian is an alpha. He’s a well-established, well-liked, alpha rock star who’s vastly more popular than Tony, and Tony is a twenty-year old omega who has built an image on being wholesome and good. He can’t lose his mind at everything Killian did tonight or he risks losing his entire audience. He has to take it as in good faith as he can manage and be gracious and thankful towards Sersi for giving him the opportunity to finish his speech when she was supposed to be giving hers and not scream at the four other people on that stage, including his own boyfriend, who hadn’t done anything to stop Killian from getting up there in the first place.
He swallows hard and repeats, “I’m not going to say anything bad about Killian.”
“But you were excited to see him?” the reporter pushes.
“Well, yeah,” Tony says, smiling tightly. “It’s Aldrich Killian. I’m a big fan.” He’s not so much of a big fan anymore, but he doesn’t want rumors of a feud spreading if he used the word was. “And then like I said, I wasn’t excited anymore.”
In the brief pause before the reporter finishes thinking through his next line of questions, Tony murmurs, “Excuse me,” and starts pushing through the mob again. This time, they let him go (or maybe they’re just so taken aback by him refusing to say anything bad about what happened), and he’s able to make it to the car before anyone else catches him.
Fortunately—or maybe not so fortunately, given everything—Aldrich Killian leaves the theater as Tony’s climbing into his car, and he’s immediately a more tempting interview target than Tony is. He’s sure that Killian will give them all of the quotes and tabloid fodder they could possibly want, especially given that he’d been asked to leave but apparently hadn’t vacated the theater in its entirety, just the show. Killian will probably give them even more about how he doesn’t think Tony deserves the award he’s holding, lambast whoever’s decision it was to kick him out, and deny that he’d done anything to be ashamed of at all—and given the way everyone had been booing Tony after Killian’s speech, he’ll probably get a whole lot of agreement.
Tony looks back over his shoulder, just in time for Killian to meet his eyes over the crowd. Killian smiles meanly and glances down at the award in Tony’s hand. Tony inhales sharply and shuts the door. He glares at the award and throws it hard at the other door. It’s too well-made to break just like that, simply clattering to the floor instead.
“Sir?” the driver asks hesitantly (pityingly, Tony’s mind supplies). “Do you still want to go to the afterparty?”
Tony laughs hollowly. “God, no,” he says. He can only imagine what’ll happen if Killian showed up. “Just—hotel. Please.”
“Of course, sir,” the driver says and pulls away from the curb.
Tony slumps back in his seat, buries his face in his hands, and bursts into tears.
He’s still crying when he gets to the hotel, though the valet is kind enough to take one look at him and direct him through the back entrance where the only people who’ll see him are the staff who’ve all signed NDAs and are getting paid enough to be discreet anyway.
“Tony?” someone asks.
He sighs wearily, just wanting to collapse on his bed, but turns, wiping his tears away with the heel of his hand at the same time. “Oh,” he says, surprised to see Sunset just a few doors down from his room. “I didn’t know you were staying here too.”
“I always stay here,” she says. She gives him a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry about what happened to you tonight.”
“Thanks,” he murmurs.
“It’s a shame no one stood up for you.”
She didn’t either, but he appreciates the sentiment anyway. It means a lot to him that someone thought what Killian did was shitty. He thanks her again. She smiles tightly and disappears back into her room. And finally—finally—he’s alone.
He trudges through the door of his room, barely with it enough to remember to take off the ridiculous dress he’s wearing. His phone is sitting on the dresser where he left it since the ridiculous dress didn’t have pockets. It’s still lighting up with texts; just at a glance, he can see that he has well over fifty unread messages waiting for him to parse through the pity and sympathy. He doesn’t want to deal with any of that. He feels worn out and empty, and the thought of having to respond to so many people about how he’s doing after the night’s humiliation is completely unappealing. He sends one text to Ana instead, lets her know that he’s not planning on doing anything drastic, and asks her to field responding to anyone else. And then, with that done, he turns off the phone and collapses onto the bed in nothing but his underwear and screams into the pillow.
He doesn’t know when he fell asleep exactly, but the next thing he knows, he’s jolting awake to someone knocking on the door. Tony blinks blearily at it for a moment, trying to puzzle through it in his mind.
Only a few people know where he’s staying, and they should have all been reassured by Ana that he’s upset but ultimately fine. It’s possible someone slipped where he’s staying to the press, but it’s a very exclusive hotel. There aren’t a whole lot of ways for someone to get up to his room, and even if they had, they’d be more likely to lay in wait outside to snap a picture of him when he left.
“Tony?” Steve asks through the door.
Oh. He probably should have expected that Steve would want to check on him personally. They’ve been fast friends since the moment they met, and his band is very protective of him after everything with Rumiko and Peter. Steve is probably one of the best friends he has, even more so than Happy or Rhodey or Pepper since he sees him a lot more often. He’s half-surprised that Natasha and Sharon aren’t also right there with him, banging on his door.
He pulls on the robe the hotel provided and opens the door, rubbing the last little bit of sleep out of his eyes. Steve breathes out a relieved sigh as soon as he does, giving him a quick onceover like he’s making sure he’s okay.
“Hey,” Steve says quietly. “Can I come in?”
“Ana should have told you I was fine,” Tony says instead of letting him in.
Steve gives him a disbelieving look. “Ana said you didn’t want to be bothered, not that you were fine.”
“Well, that should have told you something, shouldn’t it,” Tony states, even as he steps back. “And I am fine, by the way.”
Steve gives him another look as he slips inside. “You really expect me to believe that?”
“Believe it or don’t,” Tony retorts. “But I am.”
Steve hums knowingly. Tony tries to keep a handle on his emotions, but he can’t. Not with Steve. Not with the person who’s become his best friend in his band. He’s not fine. He is hurt. Another musician that he liked and respected and counted himself a fan of got up in front of an audience full of their peers and told all of them that he thought Tony’s music wasn’t nearly as good as someone else’s—someone who, it should be noted, would go on to win the biggest award of the night—and then all of their peers had booed him. He feels crushed. He feels like taking everything that he’s worked on for the next album and throwing it out and retreating to New York to work for Stark Industries. He’s never heard such a loud, ringing endorsement that he should quit making music.
Strong arms wrap around him, a familiar voice saying soothingly in his ear, “Hey, hey, hey. I know, Tony. I know it sucks. Come on, let’s go sit down.” He’s guided onto the couch, Steve situating them so he’s half in Steve’s lap, resting his head on Steve’s shoulder. Tony buries his face into Steve’s shirt and bursts into tears all over again.
“Where’s Bucky?” Steve asks. “Why isn’t he here with you?”
“I didn’t tell him where I was,” Tony confesses through his sobs. “I didn’t—he was up there! He didn’t do anything.”
“Oh, Tony—”
“Do you think he agrees with him? I mean, everyone else agrees with him, so why wouldn’t he?”
“Now, hang on a moment; what do you mean everyone agrees with Killian?”
Tony leans away a bit, confused enough that his tears dry up and he’s able to wipe his face. He frowns at him. “Why do you sound so surprised? You were there. You heard them booing me.”
“Booing you?” Steve repeats incredulously. “Tony, no one was booing you. They were booing him. Because it was shitty. And tacky. And completely classless. He should never have done something like that in public and everyone knew it.”
“But they—”
“Tony,” Steve says seriously, taking his hands and squeezing them (he’s warm, and Tony is so cold, and he leans his head back on Steve’s shoulder), “do you think it’s possible that you think everyone was booing you because you’re your own harshest critic?”
“But I—”
“Tony. Think about it. Really think about it. I know it was embarrassing. I know it was upsetting. But is it possible?”
And when he thinks about it the way Steve has been putting it, it does make sense. Killian hadn’t had any class at all by getting up there like that, but even if everyone there had agreed with him, most of them would’ve had more class than to admit it. But there’s still a part of him—the part that reads every single review of his albums, no matter how negative they are—that thinks it must have been about him because he can’t imagine that they don’t see the same flaws that he does.
“Bucky didn’t do anything because he was just as surprised as you were,” Steve says gently. “And if you still don’t want to see him, that’s fine, but he’s been worried sick about you all night. He almost attacked Killian at the afterparty earlier.”
“He did?” Tony asks, hating how fragile he sounds, but he’d been so hurt that Bucky had stood there on that stage and let Killian say those things.
“Yeah,” Steve murmurs. “Only reason he didn’t is because Nat held him back. It’s probably a good thing I was already on my way over here. She couldn’t have held both of us back.”
“Really?”
Just like he always does, Steve understands exactly what he’s asking and says, “He was a bully tonight. He deserved worse than getting yelled at.”
Tony mulls that over in his mind for a while as Steve cards his fingers through his hair before finally nodding. “You can tell Bucky he can come over.”
Steve doesn’t make a big deal out of it, just hums and says, “Alright,” as he pulls out his phone and shoots a text off to Bucky. “You wanna watch something while we wait for him?”
He nods, but doesn’t really pay a whole lot of attention to whatever Steve winds up picking. He keeps going over the night in his head, wondering what he could have done differently to stop it from happening at all. When Killian had jumped up there in the first place, he’d been so excited. He’d thought it was part of the award, not that he would belittle him. He feels violated, like a piece of his innocence has been stripped away. There are seedier parts to fame, he knows that, but tonight was like nothing he’s ever seen before. He doesn’t like it; it makes him want to go home to the Jarvises and try to make himself small again because if he’s doing it to himself, then someone else isn’t making him feel that way.
The door opens, but Tony doesn’t notice.
“Thanks for taking care of him,” someone says quietly.
“Of course,” Steve says just as softly. “He’s my…” He pauses and then continues, in an odd voice, “He’s my best friend.”
Tony is warmed by that, but it’s nothing compared to Bucky’s salt air and coconut scent pressing up against him right before Bucky himself sits down on the couch and draws Tony into his lap. Tony goes willingly, curling into him, feeling himself go boneless under the waves of reassurance that Bucky is putting out. His alpha is here; he can let him shelter him from the rest of the world.
“Hey, baby doll,” Bucky says gently. “I’m so sorry, but I promise you, I won’t let that happen to you ever again.”
And even though he knows it’s a pie crust promise, easily made and easily broken, after everything he’s been through that night, he lets himself believe it. There’s no shame in holding onto his innocence just a little bit longer.